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SECRET DRAMA 


BY 

ISABEL BEAUMONT 

n 


“The envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed 
melts before our outstretched hand, and there remains only the 
capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, 
no hand can grasp,”—J oseph Conrad. 


) 



NEW YORK 

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 



, i 






' o 




I 


COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, 


INC. 




PRINTED IN THE U S. A. BY 
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY 
RAHWAY, N. J 

FEB-8’23 .. 

©C1AC0C276 



4 


ft 


ft 



CONTENTS 


JO 
*< 

> 

(Th> 

PART I 


MARIE 


CHAPTER 

I. The Mother 





• 

PAGE 

3 

II. The Daughter . 





• 

21 

III. Nocturne 





• 

27 

IV. Letters 





• 

57 

V. Hobart Ramsay . 





• 

79 


PART II 
DIDO 


I. Insights .in 

II. Tension.120 

III. One Part of the House . ... . . 138 

IV. Another Part of the PIouse . . . .154 

V. Night in the House.170 

VI. Conversations.194 

VII. On Hirst Hill.208 


PART III 


MISS HAMMOND 


I. 

The End of That Day . 

• • 

• 239 

II. 

The Night. In Miss Wilson’s Room . 

. 249 

III. 

Withdrawal .... 

a • 

. 266 

IV. 

Impact . 


• 27s 

V. 

Enlightenment .... 

• • 

. 3OO 

VI. 

The Mother—the Woman 

• • 

. 31O 

















PART I 
MARIE 


A 



I 


CHAPTER I 
THE MOTHER 

i 

Having placed the tray on the table, Mrs. Jesson stood, 
without a movement, without a change in her intense and 
profound expression, looking at the dishes set round the 
slim silver vases of roses on the white cloth. She was not 
thinking. She was shaking with an accentuation of the 
happiness which, ever since she received Marie’s letter, 
had steadfastly endured in her. It was as if the dainty 
and simple things gathered in the yellow light had in some 
mysterious manner convinced her of the reality of her 
happiness. Everything seen during this interval of time 
which lay between her departure from America and her 
position of immobility here beside the table had had the 
vagueness, the imponderable faintness, of an illusion. But 
the old Spode teacups were real; the silver cake-basket, the 
silver spoons, thin with age, the cucumber and ham sand¬ 
wiches, the honey, amber and thick in the perfect holes 
of the comb—they were all real. 

She raised her eyes. Small, pale, moist, between triangu¬ 
lar lids, they gazed through a window at the long snipped 
shadow of the woodlands unmoving, dark, on a sky without 
a cloud. Her lips twitched. She looked inspired, she 
looked as if she were contemplating some state of being, 

3 


4 


SECRET DRAMA 


beautiful, religious, personal, which made her heart burn 
and her large wrinkled hands tremble on the handles of 
the tray. Almost inaudibly she spoke. 

“To be a mother—‘I thank the gods that have given 
me love and a child.’ ” 

In her immobility, in her rapt contemplation of space, 
in her supreme artless sentimentality, she was dramatic, 
she was impressive. There was no sound of any other 
human being in the house nor the garden, and yet, stand¬ 
ing there with her roughly modeled rust-red face uplifted, 
her lips moving as she murmured the words of Kipling 
underlined long ago and then memorized, she had a declama¬ 
tory look as if she were testifying to a creed in the face 
of an immense multitude. Presently she smiled; she glanced 
again at the table. Had she forgotten anything? Marie 
always said she couldn’t think and act too. It was be¬ 
cause she was getting old. And she was excited now. 
But everything seemed to be on the table. 

For a moment she restlessly rubbed the handles of the 
tray, in an indeterminate mental condition, her mind busied 
with the tea and yet conscious still of those bright convic¬ 
tions, hopes, and faiths. Then with an effort she divorced 
it from the world of dream on a swift remembrance of 
Marie’s condemnation of that part of her life. “Marie 
knows I’m old-fashioned,” she thought, “and when I get 
thinking I make mistakes. And if, as she says, everything 
I think is wrong—well, it’s only waste of time. But I 
can’t believe that all the old things are wrong.” 

Her eyes lifted in the stress of that immense perplexity, 
but she had altered her position a little and they looked 


THE MOTHER 


5 


now not on the skyline, but at her reflection in a mirror on 
the opposite wall. She was immediately distracted from the 
problems of Victorian and Georgian morality. She walked 
across to the mirror. She assiduously examined herself. 

Only the protuberance of her back revealed her seventy 
years. Her thick body was vigorous and firm. She wore 
a dark-blue chiffon coat and a blue silk dress, but she had 
fastened up the skirt when a little while ago she watered 
some young cabbages, and a rather short white cotton pet¬ 
ticoat revealed not only several inches of solid leg below 
it, but also vaguely indicated the presence of those shapes 
within it. Her broad pink arms, bare from the elbow, 
hung at her sides. Her thick and flattened profile set be¬ 
tween the white crispness of abundant hair, and the dim soft¬ 
ness of her dress, with the lips forming a thin arch above 
the bold chin, the nose fleshy, the eyes, intent, meditative, 
faintly perplexed, under unconsciously angry brows, seemed 
to suggest her for long service, for endurance, for an unend¬ 
ing self-immolation. She had a dauntless and stoical look 
as of one fitted for the rigors of life—for the demands on 
the body and the wounds for the spirit. 

She wondered whether Marie would approve her appear¬ 
ance. She expected there were a great many faults she 
didn’t see. “I’ll put a little powder on,” she thought. 

She could not look at herself with any emotion that 
was not inspired by her sense of her relation to Marie. 
She had no interest in herself as an individual. She was 
important, morally and physically, only as she affected 
Marie’s esthetical susceptibilities, her happiness, or her 
ideas. At this moment she positively felt Marie’s black, 


6 


SECRET DRAMA 


dispassionate, resigned eyes scrutinizing her; she unpinned 
her skirt and shook it down, and went out of the room 
quickly, with a happy admission of the redness of her 
unpowdered face. She smiled because it was so sweet to 
feel that she was obeying Marie’s wishes. As she mounted 
the staircase she thought: 

“It doesn’t matter what an old woman like me looks 
like, but Marie thinks every one will notice me; she wants 
me to be a credit to her.” 

She was impressed by the quietude of the house. If 
Marie were not coming—if Marie did not exist—if she 
were alone! She glimpsed horror. The reality of her posi¬ 
tion made her tremble again. Marie was coming—did 
exist—she would never be alone. Wait a little and hear 
the house then, see then this brown, dumb, staring passage! 
She had a vision of the yellow road from Mellbury Station, 
the faded blue trap moving down it, and Marie, brilliant, 
impenetrable, careless, seated beside Johnny. There would 
be boxes in the hall, noise, confusion. . . . 

In the open doorway of her bedroom she stopped and 
listened. No, there wasn’t a sound on the road. How 
silly she was! The train had only just come in. 

Without a thought, or conscious vision; moving with a 
sense of pervading light, light which flushed the outside 
world, the room, and filtered into her head and washed 
over the whole moral landscape of her life, she went to 
the dressing-table and shakily powdered her face and neck. 
Her heart beat quickly. She was almost frightened. The 
magnificent reality took shape as a picture so perfect that, 
contemplating it, she could not believe in its permanency. 


THE MOTHER 


7 


She stared breathlessly at that vision of Marie in the gar¬ 
den which involuntarily her mind had offered her as a 
simplification of all her chaotic knowledges. Marie with 
her always now—fixed here, one with the life of the house, 
within the range of her eye, the clasp of her hand. If 
she moved or spoke, desolation would descend on her. Per¬ 
fect passivity, a supreme caution, these alone would preserve 
the tenure of that picture. No, she couldn’t believe in its 
everlastingness. Marie wouldn’t stay. A few months, per¬ 
haps a year—and she would be alone again. 

Her hands descended to the dressing-table and rigidly 
rested there. Her broad bosom stirred. Her eyes, tragic¬ 
ally still, stared with a glassy darkness from the dry white 
which now rose, with a frigid and insensitive look, above 
her dress. She was conscious of the soundless room be¬ 
hind, of the house gathered about her, suddenly sinister in 
its hush; its apathy only superficial, full of an implacable 
intention, patient, assured; without turning she could see 
the hill, no human movement nor sound on it. 

In the passage a door opened and closed. Footsteps 
passed her room and descended the stairs. She drew a long 
breath. 

“I mustn’t look forward,” she said. “I’ve always tried 
not to, and I must try now. I must live in the present. 
It’s the only way, if one is to have any peace at all. I 
mustn’t think about the future. The present is very good. 
I’m very happy—and thankful. I won’t think about what 
may come to me. It only frightens me—and then perhaps 
it don’t come after all.” 

She laughed a little, curling and uncurling her fingers 


8 


SECRET DRAMA 


against her dress. So for a moment she remained, moving 
her lips, steadily moving her lingers. Then she turned; 
she went out of the room, downstairs and towards the 
kitchen, following the light, quick footsteps whose direction 
she unconsciously had noted. 

ii 

Since she left school twelve years ago, Marie Jesson had 
not had more than six consecutive months at home with 
her parents. A year traveling in Germany with a girl¬ 
friend, another year with the same friend in Scotland, six 
months in Ireland, two years in a flat in Kensington when 
she and this devoted May Bessant ran together a small art 
shop, living, they said, “quite indifferent to physical con¬ 
ditions, happy mentally among our beads and lovely old 
curios—Bohemian but perfectly moral”; scattered months 
on the east coast and under the South Downs, two years 
in France doing clerical work with the V.A.D., a year in 
America with her mother after her father’s death, a year 
with May in London—these were some of the phases of 
Marie Jesson’s life from the age of twenty to thirty-two. 
During them, or in the period when she was considering 
some new form of action, she came home to Rowe Green, 
the little village near the edge of the Weald under the 
shapes of the three finest heights of the North Downs— 
Brend Hill, Hirst Hill, and Broad Down. She never stayed 
longer than six months. 

For that time she tolerantly received her mother’s wor¬ 
ship and submission; she subjected her mother to discipline 
in such matters as social deportment, suppression of indi- 


THE MOTHER 


9 


viduality, and cultivation of recognized social and moral 
principles; she flirted with her father; she exploited her 
interest in the village, her democracy, her fine perceptive¬ 
ness for all that was delicate, humorous, tragic, ironic, in 
the lives of “this class of people”; and then she withdrew 
in a confusion of luggage and admiring attendants, without 
a backward glance at that massive and stiff figure standing 
in its incongruous silks—Mrs. Jesson always wore silk 
dresses—just inside the porch. 

It sometimes seemed to Mrs. Jesson that nearly half her 
married life had been a battle with the desolating effects 
of that constantly recurring scene of resignation. Until 
her husband’s death, two years ago, she could never, when¬ 
ever Marie was absent, come to the porch and look across 
the reedy oval of the Green without becoming sensible of 
a faint, insidious sadness which seemed to brood over the 
pale brown widths, without catching in the sensitive air 
some light, melancholy vibration of those times of pain, 
almost of despair. The illusion of Marie’s presence grew 
stronger then. She had to turn sharply to exorcise from 
the whispering wild place that gay figure suspended in some 
familiar movement of departure and always with averted 
face, with eyes set inexorably on some distant goal. Never 
regretfully looking back, nor lingering. No, never. 

Mrs. Jesson was an American. She had come to England 
with a party of friends when she was thirty-six, and there 
met Henry Jesson. She married him a year later. He 
was a doctor whose practice extended over Rowe Green, 
where he lived, and the neighboring villages of Mellbury, 
Hirstwood, and Brend. Mrs. Jesson adored him. In the 


10 


SECRET DRAMA 


exaltation of her love and her conception of wifely duty 
she relinquished, with almost a fiery joy in her sacrifice, 
all idea of returning to America and her people. For she 
wanted to return. She never completely lost that feeling 
of the temporary character of her stay in England. The 
years passed without bringing to her any sign of a near 
end of life in this place; but her eyes still rested on 
the strong contours of the hills, the seemingly imponder¬ 
able blue shade of the South Downs with its illusion, through 
the altering light, of placid stir, in the indestructible sense 
of them all as foreign, as having no claims on her fidelity, 
no power of inspiration nor assistance. 

After thirty-four years she still felt that, spiritually, she 
was only camped here, and when her husband died she 
returned with Marie to America, passionately forcing her¬ 
self to believe that she would not again touch English shores 
—no, not even though Marie had made the ominous de¬ 
mand that the house at Rowe Green should be let furnished 
instead of sold—passionately figuring Marie always with 
her, even while haunted by Marie’s decisive “I shan’t stop 
here for good, if you do. I shall be running over occasion¬ 
ally at least.” 

She did stop a year. Then she sailed for England, for 
London, for May Bessant. Mrs. Jesson remained, hoping, 
losing herself in long, formless broodings, growing daily 
more conscious of an awful silence and blankness. She 
seemed to sit for hours in a profound stillness, listening. 
She was always listening. She could not subdue that feeling 
of dwelling in the deepest parts of her nature, absolutely 
without communication or contact with any human being. 


THE MOTHER 


ii 


Her sisters and' their children were with her and she loved 
them. Her communion with them was sweet, but—she 
was alone, she was in silence. How unhappy she was! 

Then Marie’s letter came. Marie was fired with a con¬ 
ception of life at Rowe Green—esthetical, calm, natural. 
She longed to enjoy it. Mother was to return at once and 
turn out the people in the house and make all ready for 
Marie’s arrival. Marie was then flying off to Ireland with 
May for a final hectic time before embracing nature and the 
“neolithic villagers.” She would be back when St. Hubert’s 
was in order. She had quite decided to settle at Rowe Green 
with occasional flights into subtler and more progressive 
spheres. Didn’t mother want to see her own daughter? Re¬ 
turn at once. 

Mrs. Jesson returned. 

m 

It was Miss Wilson who had gone into the kitchen. She 
was now in the scullery, washing out a cup and saucer. One 
of the taps was running and she had not heard Mrs. Jesson’s 
entrance. She stood with her eyes fixed on the cup which 
she revolved in her fingers, half out of the shining water. 

Mrs. Jesson on her arrival at Rowe Green had found 
herself confronted with two difficulties. The first was that 
Mr. Baird, to whom she had let the house, had bought a 
cottage in Somerset and was having it enlarged with the 
intention of moving there in six months on his retirement 
from business. It was not yet ready for him, and he re¬ 
ceived with consternation Mrs. Jesson’s cablegram asking 
him to find other quarters. He waited till her arrival and 


12 


SECRET DRAMA 


then suggested that he and his wife should withdraw to 
Somerset to apartments and endeavor to hasten on the 
alterations, while Dido his daughter and Hilda his niece re¬ 
mained here with Miss Hyde the companion-help, if Mrs. 
Jesson could spare three rooms and the kitchen. Of course 
the girls could go to an hotel. But—very happy here— 
pretty place—felt at home—and it was quite impossible 
to get rooms for the whole family at Blagdon. The vil¬ 
lage was full up—such a bad month August, and besides, 
some of the women ought to be near town. 

Mrs. Jesson consented. 

The second difficulty was—maids. With four rooms 
let, she thought she could manage with a working-house¬ 
keeper and a daily girl. After some trouble she secured Miss 
Wilson for the former post. 

Miss Wilson had hitherto supplemented the very small 
income drawn from the savings of the late Mr. Wilson, by 
teaching in a suburban private school; but her mother’s ill¬ 
ness had forced her to give this up, and after Mrs. Wilson’s 
death she found herself unable to obtain again even the 
w r eekly eight shillings and the daily lunch given in ex¬ 
change for a concentrated attention to the mental develop¬ 
ment of thirty ruthless and unscrupulous little boys and 
girls through a six-hour day. She came therefore to live 
with a married sister at Rowe Green, almost feverishly jus¬ 
tifying the gift of a room and food by doing most of the 
house-work and helping with the cooking. She had lived 
thus for a year. She was not happy. Her sister saw that, 
but was not sufficiently perceptive to discern the funda¬ 
mental reason for her discontent. She imagined that Nellie 


THE MOTHER 


13 


fretted because she was dependent on her sister, and, hear¬ 
ing of Mrs. Jesson’s domestic needs, suggested, under Nel¬ 
lie’s timid and wavering gaze, that here was a chance of 
independence, comfort, and at least as much ease and dig¬ 
nity as was allowed by the school life or the duties as 
“Auntie.” 

“You’ll see plenty of people,” she said. “When Mrs. 
Jesson’s daughter gets back they’ll entertain a lot. It’s not 
a dull house.” 

She did not understand then, nor afterwards in her 
few wondering retrospects, the meaning of the dim flush 
which moved under Nellie’s tender, slightly sallow skin; 
she could not name the expression with which for an instant 
Nellie’s momentarily steady eyes rested on her own. That 
strange look was subdued at once, but the flush remained 
as Nellie said she would consider the proposal. 

She afterwards agreed to it. 

Now she stood at the sink, a tall, thin, stooping woman 
of thirty-three. She had a delicate rather pretty profile, 
and, in her light, worn body, in the attitude of her head, 
quite shapeless with the smother of its untidy brown hair, 
in the fold of her soft, unrestful lips, the stir of her young, 
conscious eyes, a look of inward agitation. Her movements 
appeared automatic; they were not clumsy, but they had a 
palpably provisional air. She had the aspect of one who 
conscientiously recognized the exigencies of the present, 
but sustained them only through the contemplation of a 
possible and far different future, and who endured after 
every hopeful dream the pang of doubt, the darkness of 
realities. 


i 4 SECRET DRAMA 

“Are they Miss Hammond’s things, Nellie?” Mrs. Jesson 
asked. 

Miss Wilson started perceptibly and looked round. “I 
didn’t hear you come in,” she explained, with a nervous 
laugh. “Yes; I’ve just brought them down.” 

“You have the kettle on for tea? I’m expecting Miss 
Marie any moment.” 

She had not moved from the doorway and one large 
white hand fumbled with the door-knob; she gazed be¬ 
yond Miss Wilson’s emotional face, at the three frying- 
pans hanging on nails along the edge of a shelf. 

She did not see them. She scarcely saw Miss Wilson. 
Her mind was a blank, and her eyes blind to all concrete 
shapes. Marie’s figure swinging to her through light— 
she saw only that. 

“It doesn’t seem like home to me until she comes,” she 
went on. “I haven’t seen her for a year. And it seems 
a lifetime. . . .” 

She had a pause, struggling to reduce to words the shapes 
flashing, vague and beautiful and complex, on the fringes 
of her mind. She stood so long, silent, staring, absorbed, 
that Miss Wilson brought out weakly: 

“I know what you must feel. I think a mother’s 
love . . 

Mrs. Jesson glanced at her as from an immense distance. 
“Only a mother knows what a mother feels. You’ll know 
when you’re a mother, Nellie. You don’t know now.” 

But if she could tell Nellie! She wanted to tell, not 
because she cared whether Nellie as Nellie knew or not, 
but because she wanted to demonstrate to a human being 


THE MOTHER 


i5 


the singularity of the mother’s state, its unapproachable 
wonder and mystery. She wouldn’t at that moment have 
been anything but a mother for worlds, she thought. Tell 
Nellie why, her brain urged. There she is, chaste, child¬ 
less; you pity her because she is these things. You hope 
she’ll know, one day, your ecstasy, the golden chaos you’re 
moving in. Tell her what you feel. 

But she couldn’t. The warm, bright scullery seemed 
to throb; a running flash from pewter and copper seemed to 
strike her eyes sharply in the intensity of her effort for self- 
expression. The steam from Nellie’s hot dish-water fantas¬ 
tically deepened her sense of groping in mists. She grasped 
the door-knob firmly in a momentary unconscious fear of 
the dissolution of her physical surroundings. The touch of 
its cold metal calmed her. She abandoned all attempt at 
analysis and presentation of her feelings. If she allowed 
herself to get so excited she would do something silly when 
Marie came, and Marie did so like her to be sensible. She 
looked kindly at Miss Wilson. 

“Don’t make the tea directly you hear Miss Marie,” she 
said. “I’ll ask her if she wants it at once.” 

She turned away, glancing round the kitchen. She felt 
that it was impossible for her to hurry, or do any definite 
thing. She was irresistibly impelled to make these pauses 
while she stared from a fresh angle at the simple, trivial 
objects which yet had so close an association with her 
life, so recondite a power to stir emotion and bring her 
near understanding of the realities of our existence. The 
sight of the kitchen now, not sunny but shadowless and 
sharp, was like the quick run of a new stream of delight 


i6 


SECRET DRAMA 


into her rich accumulations. She thought that she loved 
it. The space of brown floor, the square table, the deep 
reds and blues of the china on the dresser, her sewing- 
machine, the white ceiling cleanly spread above the dun- 
ness and emphatic colors below—they were not simple, 
they were intrinsically subtle and important. She almost 
reached the knowledge of them as being her moral supports, 
the ramparts which stood between her and the vast, dis¬ 
orderly outer loneliness, her safeguards against the feeling 
of pessimistic wonder and dismay. There was a flutter of 
memories in her head. She did become carried on to the 
thoughts: “It’s wonderful how these little things mean 
so much to us! I’ve worked myself out of many a fit 
of the blues at that old sewing-machine. And forgotten 
my sorrows for a time making pastry at that table. It’s a 
good thing we’ve plenty of work to do. If we sat down 
and let ourselves think—well, there wouldn’t be any sanity 
left in the world.” 

She glanced back at Miss Wilson, who was polishing the 
cup. “It’s nice to be home again, Nellie.” She heard a 
sound in the hall. “Is that you, Bessie?” 

“Yes, only me.” 

Mrs. Jesson went into the hall. 

A tall, fat old woman in black stood there. This was 
Bessie Hammond, a second cousin who had been living for 
some years in America with one of Mrs. Jesson’s sisters, and 
whom Mrs. Jesson had brought home to live at St. Hubert’s. 

“Only me,” Miss Hammond repeated. 

Out of her round, plump, yellow face her eyes stared at 
Mrs. Jesson. They were wide open, and this exhibition 


THE MOTHER 


*7 


of much discolored eyeball round faded blue glassy irises 
gave her a look of aching intentness, of preparedness for 
some event; a vigilance which was made distressing by 
her obvious and realized unfitness to meet any event. She 
bore her shapeless, soft body uneasily as if she doubted 
its right to a portion of space or ground; she held a bas¬ 
ket of sewing as if the possible reproaches for having 
taken this basket had just occurred to her with numbing 
force. 

In all other matters, there was nothing unusual about 
her. Thin brown hair lay closely to her large head and 
stood out at the back in a little knob. Her features were 
large and commonplace; her thick, pale lips looked inex¬ 
pressive; under the pallor of her eyes were deep brown 
hollows; small brown patches flecked the moist yellowness 
of her skin. 

“Waiting for Marie?” she enquired. 

“Yes. She’ll be here any minute now. Will you have 
another cup of tea when we have ours?” 

“Yes, please, I think I will.” Miss Hammond smiled, 
a softer, happier look coming into her eyes. “So kind 
of you. I’ll just take my basket into the dining-room. 
So nice to think Marie’s coming, isn’t it?” 

She had moved forward and now paused, her head turned 
towards Mrs. Jesson, her smile lingering, her eyes atten¬ 
tive. 

“Very nice, Bessie. I shan’t know any peace until she’s 
in the house.” 

Miss Hammond gave a high little laugh. “So kind of 
you—so nice to have her. Everything’s very nice, isn’t 


i8 


SECRET DRAMA 


it?” She shuffled, smiling-lipped, her eyes burning wanly in 
the clear shadow she had entered, towards the dining¬ 
room. 

Mrs. Jesson glanced at the clock. She moved nearer 
the inner hall door and gazed through its glass at the 
Green. 

A little woman with a long, hopping walk was coming 
along the path which ran round to the shops. Recognizing 
Miss Hyde, Mrs. Jesson opened the door, went into the 
porch and opened the outer door. 

“I’m waiting for my daughter,” she said. “I don’t see 
the trap.” 

She looked from eyes shaded under her palm at the 
road’s perspective. 

“Nor do I. She’s rather late, isn’t she? I expect you 
feel excited, Mrs. Jesson. I know I should. If any one’s 
coming to see me whom I haven’t seen for a long time, 
I’m:—oh, I can’t keep still. Excitement, you know. I 
shake all over, I can assure you I do. When it’s any one 
you’re fond of, you know, and you haven’t seen them for 
a long time—oh, I think it’s most trying. It’s an ordeal. 
It really is.” 

Miss Hyde spoke very quickly and with movements 
of her tongue and mouth which suggested that she was 
dropping out pebbles. She moved quickly her little gray 
head in its stiff blue straw hat, her faint high brows, her 
interested, fair little eyes, her narrow shoulders. She was 
about sixty. Her glance was very bright and innocent. 
She looked delightedly at everything. Her pointed little 
face was brimmed with light; it diffused light. Most strik- 


THE MOTHER 


i9 

ing was her ardent endeavor to convey her sympathy, her 
pleasure, her contentment. 

“I’ve just been shopping,” she went on, swinging her 
basket, and making a gay movement on the balls of her 
feet. “Miss Baird and Miss Nicholls are with me. But 
they met some friends, so I came on. Your daughter’s 
coming by the 5.22? I’ve never seen her. I didn’t see 
her when you were arranging to let the house, you know. 
I’m looking forward to seeing her. I like meeting fresh 
faces. Here come my charges.” 

Mrs. Jesson slowly turned. Yes, they were there, Dido 
Baird and her cousin Hilda, approaching easily, Dido 
with her look of slight criticism, Hilda with her brown, 
surprised eyes faintly smiling. Mrs. Jesson shook hands 
with them. She said again that she was waiting for Marie, 
that she did not yet see the trap. 

Dido said “Yes?” in her crisp, firm voice; she smiled, 
showing pretty small teeth between tender lips. Hilda 
smiled too, without losing, however evanescently, that look 
of mild astonishment. 

What nice girls they were! She ought to be very happy, 
very thankful. Every one, as poor Bessie would say, was so 
kind. Mrs. Jesson beamed on the three faces. She began 
to tell them of her excitement, not looking at them after 
the first moment, but at the shining trees along the road. 
She felt them there, the three quiet bodies; and the feel¬ 
ing communicated to her a beautiful warmth. The world 
seemed full, harmoniously so. The feeling of homogeneity 
was precious to her. She felt strong and calm, supported, 
embraced. 


20 


SECRET DRAMA 


Then Hilda, who had not yet spoken, said, her high, 
cool voice sounding pleased, “Isn’t that the trap?” 

Mrs. Jesson’s heart jumped. She turned. A little square 
thing was coming along the road, very small, very dull 
on the spacious wash of yellow air under the luster of the 
far sky. The trap—Marie. She couldn’t speak. She could 
do nothing but stand, gazing at the growing square, at the 
two lines in it which gradually rounded out. She saw the 
spread of Marie’s large hat, the dusky pallor of her face— 
then the stir of eyes, the color of mouth and cheek. 
There were movements in the porch. Her companions were 
quietly withdrawing. Airily Marie waved. 

Some force jerked her forward. Her throat ached and 
her eyes became full of tears. She heard Marie speaking, 
but the words did not reach her understanding. She was 
beside the trap now, holding up her unsteady hands. She 
gazed into Marie’s bright, amused eyes. 

“Marie—darling,” she said. 

Without touching the proffered hands Marie sprang down. 
“Hallo, mother! Why in the world did you wait out in 
this sun? Will nothing make you sensible? Now don’t 
touch my boxes. You won’t be any good; just go into the 
porch and be quiet.” 

“Can’t I help, darling?” 

“Go into the porch and don’t worry. Show a little 
sense, like a good woman.” 

Mrs. Jesson went into the porch. She watched Marie 
and the boy getting a suit-case down. She hadn’t kissed 
Marie yet—nor touched her. 

Patiently she waited. 


CHAPTER II 


THE DAUGHTER 

Everything was in the hall at last and the trap depart- 
ing. Marie glanced over her luggage. 

“The other things came all right, I suppose?” she asked, 
alluding to the luggage sent on in advance. “Where have 
you put them? In my old room? Quite right.” She 
burst out laughing, looking absently at her mother. “That 
maniac Billy Hamilton saw me off at London Bridge. May 
and I met him outside the flat. He’s too lovely. He 
would persist in pretending to be blind-o; he was rolling 
round the station, in the way of all the most Mid-Victorian- 
looking females he could see—perfectly lovely!” 

Mrs. Jesson laughed a little. “Have you enjoyed your¬ 
self, darling?” 

“Oh, had a glorious time. Is tea nearly ready? I’ll 
just have a wash.” 

She ran upstairs. Mrs. Jesson called to Miss Wilson to 
make the tea in five minutes, and then followed. 

Marie went swiftly into the bedroom, threw her hat on 
the bed, came out and crossed to the bathroom. At its 
door Mrs. Jesson, who had stopped there, clasped her by the 
arm. 

“Aren’t you going to kiss me, Marie? It’s a year since 
I saw you.” 

Marie laughed again. “How pathetic! There you are! 

si 


22 


SECRET DRAMA 


Now are you satisfied? I want to shut this door—are you 
coming in or not? Do as you like, but don’t stand there 
in the doorway.” 

‘Til come in.” 

Marie banged the door to when they had entered. She 
talked about the journey, May, Billy Hamilton, while with 
rapid, sure movements she touched taps, soap, and towel. 
She laughed a great deal, looking at her mother merrily, but 
without any sign that she saw her mother as one peculiarly 
intimate and privileged. Mrs. Jesson, gazing back without 
the smallest attenuation of her interest, felt and gently sub¬ 
mitted to what was little more than a rejection, a hard 
affirmation that she was not and never could be an influ¬ 
ential factor in Marie’s life. She suffered a little as Marie’s 
expression and manner freshly manifested this, but it was a 
subterranean pain discerned by her consciousness as a night, 
personal, discreetly hidden, far off, beyond the splendid 
realm of day in which she now dwelt. She laughed when 
Marie obviously expected her to laugh; she did not speak, 
because Marie did not want to hear her; she tried, with a 
supreme effort, to be all that Marie desired. Only—Marie’s 
conception of the perfect mother was glimpsed by her in 
flashes, confusing and strange, never as an entirety. And 
her incertitude made her nervous. A false step on this night 
of their reunion! Marie irritated! the prospect affrighted 
her. 

Marie was not like her mother physically any more than 
she resembled her morally. She looked younger than her 
thirty-two years now that her face was freshened by the 
water and her hair fallen again over her forehead. A mo- 


THE DAUGHTER 


23 

ment ago when her hair had been pushed back and her 
face wet she had looked her age and almost plain. 

She was not really pretty, but she created an illusion 
of prettiness by her joyous glance, her small, brilliant black 
eyes, and her confidence. Her black hair was charmingly 
arranged, and she had a strong neck, a full, firm figure, 
and movements which were finely definite, which had the 
grace of ease and lightness, a bearing which suggested a 
fortunate and happy mind, a complacency not obtrusive. 

But there was no distinction, no fineness, in the modeling 
of her features, nor the shape of her head and cheeks. Her 
head was large and round, though she concealed this with 
her thick hair; her cheeks were swollen, their color, before 
she powdered, was purplish, and her eyes sparkled like gems 
set in a dull bed of flesh, the lids being thick, and full, 
creased pouches lying under them. Her nose, too, was long 
and wide-tipped, and her mouth had a sunken look, an 
appearance of age, the upper lip coming low over her teeth, 
so that when she laughed only the lower row was disclosed 
and a doubt of the upper row raised, to be presently dis¬ 
pelled by the moist thread of white gradually stretching 
below the flat uncurving lip. 

To Mrs. Jesson, however, she was beautiful. Mrs. Jes- 
son held out rings, brooch, wristlet watch with the air of 
a voluntary slave. She followed her into the bedroom, say¬ 
ing: 

“I like that dress. It fits you beautifully. Have you 
been well all the time?” 

“Yes, yes, yes. Whereas the powder? I left my bag in 
the hall. Ah! ... Shout to that woman to make tea. 


24 


SECRET DRAMA 


Who is she? Some village paragon? Tell me another time. 
I’m rabid for a cup of tea at present. We’ll have it on the 
verandah.” 

“I’ve laid it in the drawing-room, darling. I thought 
it would be cooler, but if . . .” 

“Oh!” Marie howled melodiously. “Of course I shall 
have it on the verandah. Couldn’t you know I was dream¬ 
ing of a camp-chair out there all the way up from the sta¬ 
tion? But you don’t believe in telepathy, do you? You 
say you love me so much and yet you never show the 
slightest comprehension of my desires.” 

Mrs. Jesson could not answer jestingly, though she knew 
that Marie was jesting. “I do love you, Marie, but . . .” 

“Oh, mother, if you can’t take a joke I shan’t be able 
to speak to you. Come downstairs and try to be intelli¬ 
gent.” 

She swung to the door, casting a glance at the passive 
figure and uncertainly smiling face. “That’s a new dress. 
Quite all right if you’d get into it properly. It looks as if it’s 
been blown on. And I see you’ve spilt powder all over it, 
and made yourself ghastly with the amount you’ve put on. 
Oh, how I am needed here!” 

She went downstairs. 

“I dare say I should get very slovenly, Marie, if I hadn’t 
you to look after me,” Mrs. Jesson acknowledged placidly. 
“Are you going to move the things on to the verandah, 
then? I’ll tell Nellie to bring the big tray . . 

“You’ll go and sit on the verandah and be quiet.” 

This Mrs. Jesson did not want to do, but Marie thrust 
her into the drawing-room and closed the door on her. 


THE DAUGHTER 


25 


She remained for an instant arrested in the stiff, indeci¬ 
sive pose with which she had suffered Marie’s authority. 
She smiled, but her smile had no light nor ease. Marie was 
so imperious. It would have been better for Marie to rest 
while she herself helped Nellie, but Marie disliked her 
mother to do anything for her. She moved towards the 
verandah. No, not dislike; it was just one of Marie’s no¬ 
tions; it was her independence: “It wasn’t because I’m her 
mother that she didn’t want me to help her.” 

There was a sting in that! She halted, staring through 
the glass verandah door at the little wedges of pale meadow 
slipped in between the flowing and broken woods. It wasn’t 
tender concern for her mother; it was dislike of having 
any one “following her round” as she called it. And her 
mother was as irritating as any one else. 

She saw quite distinctly that night which lay implacably 
beyond this already waning day. She looked rather pite¬ 
ously at the tea-table. “She says I’ve no comprehension 
of her desires, but I sometimes think she has none of mine.” 

Marie couldn’t glimpse the delight with which she had 
laid that table, projecting her mind into the future and see¬ 
ing Marie moving around the things and so achieving 
the right pictorial effect which would enhance Marie’s charm 
there. Marie would demolish that effect without seeing 
luminous above it the glow of the mood which had inspired 
every fortunate idea—the nice blending of colors, the 
scrupulous symmetry of the whole. She wouldn’t have a 
vision, pathetic, humorous, of the mother tremendously 
striving to recall past lessons in esthetics, casual revelations 
of opinion, that she might produce a beauty which would 


26 


SECRET DRAMA 


draw from Marie some exhibition of pleasure, of praise, some 
warm expression of the joy she had in being so well inter¬ 
preted. 

Vaguely Mrs. Jesson felt this. She went on to the veran¬ 
dah clumsily as if she were moving through a cloud. Then 
she heard Marie laughing and the cloud melted; she invol¬ 
untarily turned towards the sound, smiling. 

“I can’t expect her to think and feel like I do. She’s 
young, and she’s modern. You never get back what you 
give. She loves me, but it’s not her way to show it. I 
ought to have thought she might like to be out here.” 

She looked at a camp-chair, but she felt she could not sit 
down. She moved about, altering the position of the rustic 
table, pushing chairs back, pulling others forward. Noth¬ 
ing stirred in the garden. The trees, the meadows, beyond 
the low garden fence, lay motionless and bright. She 
breathed the scent of hay, of broken sod, of aromatic weeds; 
the smell of the pond on the Green stole to her on the 
thick, still air. Thinking how she would hear all about 
Ireland and tell all about America, and Bessie, she regained 
that sense of peace. 


CHAPTER III 


NOCTURNE 

i 

In their bedroom Dido and Hilda were discussing Marie. 
Hilda was sitting at the dressing-table taking the pins out 
of her hair; Dido was changing her dress. 

“I like Mrs. Jesson,” Hilda said, regarding herself with a 
mild complacency which might have been thought the prin¬ 
cipal reason for her feeling of expansiveness towards every 
one else. 

“So do I. She’s a dear. Miss Jesson, as far as I could 
judge, looked most unlike her.” 

Hilda pondered this, the faint fragrance of an invidious 
suggestion floating to her. Unlike physically, or morally? 
Dido was so sharp. 

The cousins were the same age, both twenty-eight, and 
both looked less than that, Hilda perhaps more so than 
Dido since her inexpressiveness allowed her face to remain 
quite smooth and fresh, unmarked by emotional experience, 
while her large brown eyes looked out on the world with an 
imperceptive tranquillity. She suggested leisurely mental 
action in very simple and orderly realms. 

Her oval, perfectly colorless face had the obtuseness of 
one essentially practical, incapable of response to the imag¬ 
inative flights of others, dwelling satisfied and secure amid 

27 


28 


SECRET DRAMA 


a few concrete realities—furniture, friends, nice clothes, 
food, sewing—and estimating the value of a few emotional 
and spiritual things—friendship, enjoyment, duty—by the 
light of a Christianity which she accepted much as she 
accepted her nationality, without question or criti¬ 
cism. 

Everything which she dimly felt to be subversive of her 
own conception of light and order, or which was new or sin¬ 
gular, she acknowledged by a change in her eyes from soft 
blankness to an uncomprehending fixity. The darkness of 
her eyes in her pale face was attractive and there was some¬ 
thing pure and beautiful in their regard. They were almost 
invariably motionless under high, immobile brows. Her 
nose was aquiline, but not thin. The severe, fine sweep of 
her brown hair showed the charm of a long and narrow 
head. As she sat now with her arms raised, her figure looked 
girlishly thin, and her smile when she turned to Dido was 
girlish too in its meaninglessness, and its suggestion that 
it might inexplicably be followed by a giggle. 

Dido did not smile. Her narrow eyes merely rested mo¬ 
mentarily on Hilda’s face with a slight lessening of their 
look of happy absorption. She moved round the room 
vigorously, not speaking after that reference to Marie, but 
seeming unconscious of the silence, on her round, small 
face the stillness of one attending to the subtleties of an 
inward voice. 

She was tall and fairly plump, but all her movements were 
rapid and light. Her neck was long, and turned frequently 
with a charming air of eagerness. She had blue, keen, 
animated eyes half concealed by thin lids, under fair brows 


NOCTURNE 


29 


drawn straight and narrow above the almost childish round¬ 
ness of her nose and cheeks. It was a delicate roundness, 
finished and harmonious, and her mouth, inscrutably close 
but not compressed, still, but somehow exciting a hope 
of immediate movement, made a narrow but tender line on 
its evenness. Like Hilda she had not attempted to achieve 
seductiveness by any coquetry of hair-dressing. Outwardly, 
at least, though less strongly than Hilda, she affirmed allegi¬ 
ance to those standards derided by Marie as “Mid-Vic¬ 
torian”; her brown hair was combed back from a center 
parting and rolled casually at the back of her head; it was 
untidy and rather lank; from all angles it had an undecor- 
ative and even mean appearance. And the dress she had 
just slipped on was not half off her shoulders, and it fell 
considerably below her knees. As she came to the mirror 
and bending behind Hilda began without interest to take 
down her hair she looked beautifully unconscious. She was 
not thinking of herself as an effective power, but as a 
response, infinitely varying, to the powers of others. 

“Don’t you like Miss Jesson?” Hilda asked. 

Dido laughed. She showed her moist, small teeth, and 
a dimple came in each cheek; a stillness fell upon her 
head and face so that she seemed to be absorbed by her 
mirth and expectant of an answering gaiety. 

“How can I know whether I like her or not? I’ve only 
seen her from the window. But I thought she looked im¬ 
perious, and Mrs. Jesson was longing to kiss her and was 
foiled. Do you call that lovable—or likeable?” 

“I suppose I don’t,” Hilda said. Then, after a pause, 
“But you may be mistaken, Dido.” 


30 


SECRET DRAMA 


“Of course.” Dido’s teeth were still bared, her face firm, 
in that expression of delight. She combed her hair roughly. 

Hilda gazed at her cousin’s reflection in the mirror, and 
Dido, observing the faint question in her eyes, recognized 
and gently warmed to an emotion identical with her own. 

“I think I’m rather glad she’s come,” Hilda said. 

Dido’s short laugh broke out again. “So am I—awfully 
glad.” She pushed in hairpins. “We’re certain to meet her; 
we must be in the garden to-night. Can you look very cas¬ 
ual, Hillie? We mustn’t betray our designs.” 

While she was speaking she had stepped away from the 
dressing-table. Hilda now stood up and, looking at her, 
laughed with that same obscure delight. For a moment they 
both stood without movement, laughingly intent on each 
other. A faint bewilderment lay upon Hilda’s inquiring 
brows, but Dido looked brilliantly conscious. She knew 
why she was laughing and why she felt ever so slightly ex¬ 
cited. Hilda’s ingenuous wonder at her own sensations 
extremely amused her, and a little distracted her from the 
principal interest. She felt that Hilda, though half the 
room lay between them, was touching her. She had fast 
hold of Hilda. She was leading her. Into what realms? 
There her thoughts lost lucidity. There was a splendid 
uncertainty about the scenes they were moving to. She 
caught flashes of the protagonists in them—Marie, un¬ 
known, perhaps unknowable, Mrs. Jesson, that enigmatical 
Miss Hammond—oh, it was glorious! And there was Hilda, 
steadily beaming, giggling, looking as if aware of movement 
and quite confounded by her own exhilaration. Dear 
Hilda! 


NOCTURNE 


3i 


“I love meeting people,” Dido said. 

“So do I.” Hilda brought her assent out breathlessly, 
She looked more than ever amazed. 

“And they’re interesting people.” 

“Yes.” Hilda was less emphatic here. It was not the 
temperamental subtleties of acquaintances which intrigued 
her, but their mere humanity. Of course, it was partly 
that with Dido. Just the sheer joy of contact with kind. 
Homogeneity. 

And here they stood, still rooted in their expressive con¬ 
templation of each other, savoring their excitement, yielding 
to the mysterious drama of the moment! 

“Well, are you ready?” Dido cried, laughing. “We may 
as well have tea even though Miss Jesson has arrived.” 

“Quite ready. I should think we might. Perhaps she 
won’t want to be friendly?” 

Dido stopped on her way to the door to demolish this 
doubt. “I think she will. She didn’t look formal, and 
she’s forced to be by being in the same house. You can’t 
prance into a person in their dressing-gown morning after 
morning and preserve much distance.” 

“No, I shouldn’t think you could.” Hilda appeared to 
gaze, not without a thrilling sensation of impropriety, at 
the encounter suggested. 

“And then we already know Mrs. Jesson,” Dido went on, 
“and Miss Hammond. I’m fearfully curious about Miss 
Hammond. Is she right in the head, do you think? Why 
does she tell me how kind I am to her? I’m not conscious 
of having served her at any time!” 

“She thanks me, too. I’m sure I don’t know why.” 


32 


SECRET DRAMA 


They again looked at each other, silent, but communica¬ 
tive. Their faces were full of life, Hilda serious and yet 
somehow suggesting inward agitation more than Dido, whose 
closed lips curled upward joyously. They had forgotten tea. 
Brightly conveying to each other their sense of the momen¬ 
tum given to existence by the advent of these strangers, 
they still did not move, but slipped from response to the 
implications of speech into attentiveness to their surround¬ 
ings. 

A door opened, voices floated into the passage, and re¬ 
treated into a room at its end. Downstairs there were vague 
sounds. Their glances fell away. Both looked round them. 

To Dido everything seemed intensely sharp, wonder¬ 
fully valuable. She had a sudden pleasure in the existence 
of the small table by her bed. The clock on it, the candle¬ 
stick, the red volume of Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead — 
at the sight of them she felt the flood of happiness in her 
surge profoundly—she felt shaken. How delightful it was 
to live amid substances each of which provided a moment 
for a different realization of personal existence! Getting 
up, reading in bed, feeling the darkness falling on one with 
the smell of candlewick pungent at its heart: she just 
touched all these states and then was recalled by the sound 
of running feet and placid feet descending the staircase, by 
Hilda’s high voice, which now as so often before suggested 
not the sound but the vision of a cold, white, thin washing 
of water. 

“Shall we go down?” 

Dido uttered a crisp “Yes.” 

They went out together swiftly, speechlessly, with curious 


NOCTURNE 


33 


and intent eyes as though they walked into the heart of an 
immense but penetrable mystery. 

ii 

After tea they carried camp-chairs down the garden. 
They sat, Hilda crocheting lace, Dido re-footing stockings, 
and listened to Marie’s voice, rich and clear, now on the 
verandah, now coming through a window, now in some far¬ 
ther part of the garden; they heard her prolonged laughter. 
Occasionally Dido glanced alertly towards the house or Hilda 
widely surveyed it. They murmured opinions of Mrs. Jes- 
son, and then passed to other subjects; but always there 
endured that deeper consciousness of life, and, for Dido, a 
feeling that all inanimate things had drawn nearer. As in 
the bedroom, so here everything seemed sharp, fresh, rele¬ 
vant. The sense of pressure grew obscurely in her. Earth 
was full, not crowded; room was allowed for free, ample 
movement, but there were no wastes; earth was furnished. 
That was it! Barrenness! She found it nowhere. There 
were shapes, definite or amorphous, stretching away beyond 
sight, shapes, orderly, essential, soft. 

Looking up she saw the sprawl of woodlands over fields 
pale and chill, the rigid strings of hedgerows stretched out, 
the roofs keen and broken, and above them, above the 
faintly glossy screen of trees, Hirst Hill and Brend Hill 
arched with an aged and wan look upon the golden sky; she 
had an imperfect vision of concealed fields spilt over with 
shadow and light, smelling of hay, stretching round under 
Brend Hill into the yellow fog of the Sussex distances. And 


34 


SECRET DRAMA 


no remembrance of solitudes oppressed her; her mind 
voyaged far out to the South Downs, darker than the dark 
south, to the sea set in a muttering half-moon of luster be¬ 
tween the shore and the sky, and she was still without any 
sense of spaciousness. Order, precision, peace—she con¬ 
ceived only these. The quietude, the profound quietude— 
there was no sadness in it, no inhumanity. That flitting of 
figures across windows, and through luminous spaces of 
verandah and hall, that clear drift of voices—they subdued 
the influence of the grave land, they signed to her re¬ 
assuringly; Marie’s gestures, swift, effortless, Mrs. Jesson’s, 
slow, difficult, awakened a response in her heart. Dido was 
happy; she was invincibly secure. 

Dusk was sifting down upon the garden when at last 
Marie came up the lawn. Hilda glanced and then gazed 
again at her crochet; Dido looked straight at Marie, her 
knitting-needles skilfully moving. She thought: 

“How well she walks! She doesn’t hurry. I hate any 
one bustley. . . . Her features are too big. . . . What a 
perfectly lovely dress! Very modern. . . . I’m not going 
to like her. I’m sure I’m not.” 

But how alive one felt, in the green brightness of the 
garden, under that great sky smoking over, and with this 
supple, confident figure advancing, flowered silk dress of 
orange and black splendidly lurid in the wild, low scattering 
of light from the west. 

Marie said: “Good evening. May I introduce myself? 
It seems rather superfluous. I’ve no doubt mother has 
spoken of nothing but Marie—Marie—ever since she ar¬ 
rived. . . . This is Miss Nicholls?—how do you do? 


NOCTURNE 


35 


And you’re Miss Baird. May I intrude for a little while, or 
shall I put you out in counting stitches or twiddling that 
cotton round the right number of times?” 

Dido laughed. “Do stay. You won’t complicate any¬ 
thing. Nothing could distract Hilda from 3 treble, 1 chain, 
3 treble. She’s two people—one crochets while the other 
talks.” 

“How comfortable! . . . No, no, I don’t want a chair. 
I prefer the grass. . . . Don’t you think Rowe Green very 
pretty?” 

“Oh, we love it.” 

“I’m really fearfully excited at being back,” Marie went 
on. “I shall end my days here. I have it all mapped out. 
I shall have a fowl-run there, and more fruit trees there, and 
I shall grow to a nice respectable middle-age.” She laughed 
very much. “I’ve a nice store of memories to keep me from 
boredom. Don’t you think that’s the only thing that makes 
old age tolerable—memories of all the hectic times you’ve 
had! My friend and I—she’ll be coming down soon, you 
must meet her—we simply love to talk over our adventures; 

a boy we had staying with us once said he had to close his 

¥ 

door, they were too fruity! Lovely!” 

She threw back her head; her eyes sparkled so brilliantly 
that silvery lights seemed to move over their polished sur¬ 
face. Dido darted a glance at Hilda. She did not want 
Marie to see her silent interrogation of Hilda, but she had 
to communicate, however briefly and scantily, with the still 
figure beside her. 

Hilda was staring at Marie. And looking—dear Hilda— 
the image of fascinated surprise, and threatening a convul- 


SECRET DRAMA 


36 

sive but not quite easy outburst of giggles. Fruity stories! 
And Hilda! Good heavens! What kind of mental images 
were staggering about in Hilda’s head? 

And now this woman was speaking again (her upper lip 
looked flat under her broadened nose; that was ugly), and 
the greed of living, the greed for an inexhaustible variety 
of sensation, seemed like a flame in her; she lighted the 
garden ruddily with her dress, her eyes, her expression. But 
Hilda was white, beamless, still. How Dido’s own limbs 
felt braced, her brain virile, her vision omniscient! The 
endless vistas opening out, shadowy, large, intricate! She 
was moving forward, and high up, a little urgent rapping 
amid the clamor of sounds in her head, were these words, 
“Discovery—process.” How could she catch them when 
the physical voice of Marie went on, musical, pleased, heart¬ 
less? The worry of them! They were missiles pelting her 
consciousness. They formed into a line: “The process of 
discovery—the everlasting and perpetual process.” Dostoev¬ 
sky. Her brain cleared. She found herself breathing more 
quickly as though she had been running. With a sense of 
mental and physical relaxation she attended to Marie. 

Marie, after a rather obviously uninterested inquiry as 
to Dido’s own esthetical sensations, had glided off to her 
experiences in Ireland. She talked very fluently, looking 
away most of the time with a little unconscious rather chill¬ 
ing air of being unaware of any ability in her companions 
other than their ability to listen to her own narration. 
Dido did listen, but she was not charmed beyond judgment 
as Marie apparently expected her to be; she criticized. 
Marie’s manner was very sure; she seemed without incerti- 


NOCTURNE 


37 


tudes of any kind; her opinion of herself had evidently 
crystallized and was not to be shaken, and because it was 
a good opinion she was easy, she talked with great enjoy¬ 
ment. Her enjoyment, Dido admitted, was partly because 
she loved talking, but primarily it arose out of the certitude 
of her own effectiveness in the scenes she described. Sitting 
there, pulling the short grass, gazing gleefully before her, 
laughing, she seemed to be contemplating a mental picture 
of herself and with swift, vivid strokes to be presenting the 
full splendor of that picture to her audience. Life—and 
what Marie Jesson had made of it—that was her demon¬ 
stration. 

Dido decided this very quickly. She resolved with some 
sharpness that one day she would try to shake that confi¬ 
dence; she would try to present Marie to herself in another 
light. This intimation that Marie had been so charming, 
so witty, so invariably predominant—the conceit of it! 
Dido felt herself hardening. But she would not begin the 
assault yet. At present her intuitions were too few. And, 
also, she was interested. She was willing to listen to Marie, 
to subdue her own desire to talk and reveal her own individ¬ 
uality, that she might learn more and discover vulnerable 
places where, one day, she would dart a sting. 

She sat upright, her little, quiet face slightly tilted back¬ 
ward, her eyes a straight, faintly glinting line below dropped 
lids, and their gaze fixed, as was her habit, not on Marie’s 
face but on Marie’s neck. She always listened like this, 
with her disconcertingly steady look forced down, and she 
said “Yes” in a level, clear voice at the more emphatic of 
Marie’s assertions. 


38 


SECRET DRAMA 


Marie was describing the life of one Irish family. “I 
like that man’s books/’ she said, mentioning a young modern 
Irish novelist, “but he only sees one side of the picture. He 
paints it all darkly, and the Irish people aren’t miserable; 
they’re happy. This family was the joiliest one you could 
meet. They were desperately poor, but they had the joie de 
vivre as much as any lot of people I’ve met. They all slept 
in one room, but they were perfectly moral. They’re the 
most moral people, you know. Have you met any Irish¬ 
men?” 

Her careless glance came to Hilda, who shook her head, 
her folded lips stirring a little, her beautiful head, as she 
moved it, somehow seeming to convey nun-like rejection of 
all that could possibly emanate from Marie’s round, fluffy 
skull. 

“Oh, yes, we have,” Dido interposed. “You remember 
Mr. Mac, Hilda? He wasn’t a peasant,” turning to Marie, 
“he . . ” 

“Oh, yes. I met a perfectly charming peasant boy down 
there. He was delightful. I used to talk to him about him¬ 
self, draw him out, you know—and he wasn’t used to being 
treated as a human being. He quite worshiped me because 
I recognized that he was human and had feelings and—and 
ambitions. Oh, he was perfectly charming. He had the 
most beautiful nature. He was a real gentleman. You 
know, I think one man’s as good as another; I don’t judge 
a man by his coat; I’m a democrat. This boy was, in all 
the essentials, a gentleman. He used to talk to me and tell 
me all his dreams—a charming child. He’d have done any¬ 
thing for me.” 


NOCTURNE 


39 


She looked at them now, pressing them with the fact of 
her incomparable tact and appeal. Her glance was no longer 
absent. She scrutinized them, measuring, probing. Her 
face looked suddenly intent, though she maintained her light 
attitude. 

Dido said “Yes” in the same affirmative, unemotional 
tone. She continued to study Marie patiently. She wanted 
to be perfectly impenetrable; she longed, not angrily, but 
maliciously, to baffle Marie, to make her chagrined. But 
she was younger than Marie and far less experienced. 
Marie’s maturity and subtlety became very apparent to her 
as she watched. She suddenly seemed to be certain of 
nothing about Marie. She was gazing at a perfectly com¬ 
posed and natural face, at unreadable and, she felt with 
annoyance, tolerant, wise eyes. Marie seemed to be ob¬ 
serving her from the depths of a vast experience, kindly, 
interestedly. Her cheeks reddened a little. Her satisfac¬ 
tion was marred. She felt that it was, though she did not 
attempt to discover why. The thing she was most clearly 
conscious of was that she wanted to talk, to be brilliant, to 
assert herself. It was as if a ghost had risen up before her 
and she wanted to lay that ghost at once—irrevocably. 
And she couldn’t speak! She thought she must be sitting, 
stiff, staring, like an image. Something inside her seemed 
positively to dance with impatience. 

Marie was turning her head slowly away. She looked 
dreamily. 

There was a slight stir from Hilda. “Did you like 
America?” Hilda asked. 

Dido gazed at her. She had a gently amused perception 


40 


SECRET DRAMA 


of Hilda’s serenity. This was followed by a feeling of 
awakened vigilance. She glanced back at Marie with the 
idea of Marie as inimical, destructive. She would not have 
Hilda browbeaten and extinguished. She thought: “She 
doesn’t think either of us of any account. She’ll laugh at 
Hilda—she’ll ridicule her as old-fashioned. I won’t have 
Hilda give herself away.” 

“Oh, I loved it,” Marie was saying. “So many things 
there are better than here—their elementary education is 
splendid , and then their middle-class wives: you never see 
a woman run out there with a shawl over her head or dingy 
or untidy. ...” She had a pause, her expression changing 
into deep merriment and her face indefinably altering; it 
became sensuous; now she looked old and puffy. 

Dido stared hardly at her, she spoke resolutely: “We 
haven’t been to America. We . . .” 

Then Marie looked at her and she felt thrust back, si¬ 
lenced. She was not real to Marie except as she was a 
member of the gallery to whom Marie played radiantly. 
“Oh, no,” Marie acknowledged the remark. “You must go. 
You’ll like it. You’ve been here two years, haven’t you? 
How have you preserved your sanity! I can’t stay more 
than six months in any place. I have to move then; I feel 
the call. It’s the Wanderlust. The experiences Miss Bes- 
sant and I have had! Perhaps you don’t like tramping, or 
roughing it? Sleeping under a haystack, you know! I am 
quite indifferent to physical conditions, I live mentally. I’ve 
lived on twelve shillings a week and been riotously happy. 
I bet a man I would. Miss Bessant joined me and our 
united expenses were twenty-four shillings weekly. I lost 


NOCTURNE 


4i 


stones, but it was one of the happiest times of my life. I 
must tell you all about it one day. I’m quite determined 

that when I’m tired of this- I love it now, but I shall 

get tired of it, though mother thinks I’m settled down now 
for ever with her! Most uninteresting! But she’d fret her¬ 
self to skin and bone if she thought I meant bolting in a 
few months, so I don’t undeceive her. But when I’m ready 
for a change I’m going to have one room in town and a 
tame rat. I love animals. And rats hardly cost anything 
to feed. It would be lovely.” 

Hilda’s young, simple laughter broke out; admiringly she 
gazed at Marie. Dido laughed too, but she looked at Hilda 
tenderly and soberly. She envied Hilda her beautiful 
lack of egoism. She knew that Hilda was still glad, was 
more than ever glad, that Marie had come. She had not, 
in the bedroom, been stimulated by the prospect of an ex¬ 
change of perceptions; she had not looked forward to dis¬ 
closing her own character as well as being privileged to 
watch the disclosure of another’s, and therefore she was not 
disappointed. To sit silent, passive, apparently dull, and 
allow Marie to fulfil all her deliberated intentions inno¬ 
cently to react to Marie in the desired way—Hilda could 
do that and be happy. She looked beamingly happy now. 

Dido returned to Marie a little pensively. She had 
ceased to feel sharp and militant. She felt lonely. From 
coherent thought she relapsed into a quiet, vague musing. 
Marie was rather attractive; her eyes were so pretty; she 
had the charm of maturity. Not that Dido herself and 
Hilda were young girls, but their lives had been conven¬ 
tional, simple. 



42 


SECRET DRAMA 


Nothing moved. Now the light was a shrinking gauze 
above the Brend Hill. Without a sound, without a flaw, 
the garden, the motionless, still, bright level of the Green, 
the dark hills eternally staring at the Weald buried and 
dumb, lay round her, and impressed her with the feeling of 
a vast and shadowy expanse. The immobility seemed with¬ 
out limit in space or time. She breathed so gently that she 
could not see her bosom stirring. There was no flicker of 
stars, no floating of cloud. The house was dark and 
seemed fixed without occupants,, heavy and inert. She 
gazed at it, and the image of Mrs. Jesson drifted across her 
mind—tall, ponderous, with square white head and a 
stealthily stirring blur of hands on a dim dress, with in¬ 
scrutable eyes gazing intensely. 

Blocked against the smooth, chill sky the house stared 
at her. It was seen suddenly as full of mystery and por¬ 
tent. She forgot Hilda, she forgot Marie. She was aware 
profoundly of the gathering darkness, the low burning of 
coppery light behind the bulge of Brend Hill, the creep of 
light along the ground weak and dying; and she was aware 
of the house. Mrs. Jesson was in it and Miss Hammond, 
and Miss Wilson with her nervous lips and listening aspect 
—they moved, lonely separate figures, through the warm 
rooms. She saw them, touched them, but she did not know 
them. Under her eyes and within reach of her hand they 
could yet melt from her—or could suddenly respond to 
her seeking and blind her with the full revelation of their 
hearts and minds. 

She stared so intently at the broad bulk that the dusk 
Stirred like the wheeling of wings. A deep hopefulness and 


NOCTURNE 


43 

content settled upon her. She remembered Marie again, 
and fancied that cautiously she and Marie were revolving 
round each other, never touching, but soon to be converging 
to some point of contact. The small excitement quickened 
her heart a little. She had again a sense of momentum— 
in the house was movement, swift, noiseless, dramatic. Un¬ 
utterable tension! She stiffened. Those figures, placidly 
posturing, were full of concealed action; through the un¬ 
moving, hot, physical air swirled a strong wash of emotion. 
And she was caught in it! It would—it did—beat round 
her. Miss Hammond’s large, yellow face gazed with a ter¬ 
rifying preparedness, an unfathomable meaning, from piled 
darkness; Miss Wilson’s pale eyes looked down startled, 
wide open, at some magnificent possibility; Mrs. Jes- 
son. . . . 

Marie was laughing, gesticulating, her broad, white arms 
intensifying the darkness. The whole regard of the blind 
house was on her. Stolidly, apathetically, it waited. Marie 
would give the sign. 

Large stars were in the sky, unsteady as if a slow breath 
moved over those spaces, bloomed and dark like a grape. 
At the eastern side of the house above the flat rim of sunken 
fields the full, yellow moon rose, floating up an ashen breast. 
The three hills broke in long, swift shapes into a scattering 
of stars. In one of the windows of the house a light ap¬ 
peared, the wavering, small light of a candle. Visible move¬ 
ment at last—the wan flicker in the hollowness beyond the 
window, the light shake of the stars, the glide of the moon 
upward. 

Dido remembered that Miss Hyde was then preparing 


44 


SECRET DRAMA 


supper. She thought of the room, the circle of soft red 
light, the books, and the white walls. She bent her head 
and her gaze sank and rested on the grass. The influence 
of the house stole to her; it enwrapped her; she heard the 
light stir of sound in it, the stir of life. Life! How won¬ 
derfully lovely it was to be alive, to be surrounded by 
living creatures! 

She became without thought, seduced away into a dreamy 
stillness. 


hi 

They all stood up at last, and Dido and Hilda folded the 
chairs. Marie watched them, her arms lifted and bent, her 
finger-tips softly pressing each other, stirring; her attitude 
gracefully supple. She smiled as if she liked them, as if she 
were momentarily arrested by them. She said to Hilda: 

“What are you making?” 

“A camisole top,” Hilda replied, her open, smooth eyes 
dwelling on Marie. “I like crochet. I do a lot. It’s quite 
simple.” 

“It’s a pretty pattern.” Marie gazed at Hilda thought¬ 
fully, and Dido almost with brusqueness interposed to with¬ 
draw Hilda from scrutiny, from an analysis which could not 
be sympathetic nor appreciative. 

“We have an informal Beehive out here sometimes. Miss 
Bennett comes—I suppose you know her—and she’s crochet¬ 
ing a jumper, and we all work and discuss the burning 
questions of the hour—Spiritualism, and Psycho-Analysis, 
and the Decline of the Drama. We are fearfully highbrow.” 

“You must be! I’ll join you one evening.” 


NOCTURNE 


45 

They went down the garden together, Marie stating her 
knowledge and opinion of Miss Bennett, Dido searching her 
memories for interesting or admiring men. She wanted to 
show that she too had met men and received attention. 
Marie seemed to have innumerable encounters to relate! 
She had impressed every man she met. 

They parted on the verandah without her having found 
any sufficiently relevant story, Marie entering the drawing¬ 
room and the two girls going round to the porch. 

“I like her, don’t you?” Hilda said. “I think she’s very 
nice.” 

Hadn’t Hilda any vanity, any desire to shine herself? 

Dido gave a derisive little laugh. “I think she monopo¬ 
lized the conversation to the point of bad form. She thinks 
she’s very nice, certainly. I never met any one with a better 
opinion of themselves. You’re so charitable, Hilda. Didn’t 
her conceit disgust you?” 

“I didn’t notice it. I liked her. She had so much to 
say.” 

“She did! ... I’m just going into the kitchen to see 
what kind of fish the man left.” 

Hilda, baffling in her perfect blankness, went upstairs 
without further speech. Dido entered the kitchen. 

Miss Hyde and Miss Wilson were there together, Miss 
Hyde frying plaice at the gas-cooker, Miss Wilson leaning 
against the table, talking to her. 

On Dido’s entrance Miss Wilson made a spasmodic step 
forward. She moved her head and lips a little. “I must 
go,” she said. “I was talking to Miss Hyde while Edith 
washed up the dinner tilings.” 


SECRET DRAMA 


46 

Edith was the daily girl. 

“Don’t you go because Miss Baird’s come in,” Miss Hyde 
said. “She won’t mind. As long as I don’t let my mind 
get distracted she doesn’t mind my talking. I like to talk. 
I can work the same time. It doesn’t put me out. I can 
talk and look after my fish both the same time. I can. I 
don’t get flustered.” 

She had turned round from the gas-stove and was staring 
from Dido to Miss Wilson and from Miss Wilson to a tray 

1 

of tea things, with a radiant little glance. She did not allow 
Dido time to reassure Miss Wilson, but chattered on with in¬ 
credible speed and delight. “Don’t you go, Miss Wilson. 
It doesn’t hinder me. I like to hear you talk. We’ve had a 
nice chat. I’ve enjoyed it. I don’t see why you should keep 
to your scullery—well, you use it as a kitchen now I’ve got 
this one, but it is the scullery—I don’t see why you should 
be stuck there and me here and not dare to come in. I 
don’t. I said to Mrs. Jesson—I said, ‘I hope you don’t 
mind Miss Wilson coming in and talking to me,’ I said. 
‘Only,’ I said, ‘it won’t hinder me, and I think it’s good for 
people to mix. I don’t think it’s good to be too much 
by yourself. You get mopey. I’m sure it’s not good.’ 
Oh, I told her so. I wasn’t afraid, and she quite agreed. 
She was awfully nice. I like her. She was most kind.” 

Under her high, innocent little brows her eyes smiled at 
them, happily, but when they surveyed Dido, with a faint 
shadow of unconscious appeal; she seemed then to be making 
admissions and entreating forbearance; upon her enjoyment 
then there seemed to have crept the subduing knowledge 
of her age, her home-made clothes, her comparative loneli- 


NOCTURNE 


47 

ness, and Dido’s youth, prettiness, and good fortune. The 
next moment, as her gaze traveled round the kitchen and 
back to Miss Wilson’s long, sunken body, she gave a little 
jerk of pleasure, the light of her odd, small face almost 
seeming to exist round her visibly, brushing that part of 
the kitchen’s gaslight with a silvery gleam. 

“Of course you needn’t go, Miss Wilson,” Dido said. 
“I only came in to see if the plaice were all right. They’re 
quite fresh then, Miss Hyde?” 

Miss Hyde scarcely intelligibly poured out a recital of 
bright-red spots, a new man with a dreadful criminal face, 
a smelly turbot, and one and fourpence a pound. Miss Wil¬ 
son, resting against the table again, looked at Dido. She 
smoothed the table with her palms. Her attentive eyes 
were quiet and dilated in her soft face. 

The fish spluttered noisily. Behind Miss Hyde’s con¬ 
stantly stirring head a row of aluminum frying-pans hung 
like frigid moons. One of the brown kettle-holders hanging 
with them from the mantelpiece was touched when she turned 
jerkily and it swung for a little while, the only moving 
thing among the stiff shapes in the room. Miss Wilson 
presently looked away from Dido and fixed her eyes on this 
kettle-holder. 

There was no congruency between the prosaic, shabby 
thing and her brooding and emotional stare. She looked 
full of feeling. Her brown hair had a collapsed appearance; 
desolately it straggled in a long fringe on to her collar. It 
was a high muslin collar with a wide frill of white lace 
round it, and her neglected head, her slender creased neck, 
her melancholy profile, rose out of the frill with all their 


SECRET DRAMA 


48 

pathos heightened. She wore an apron, but this was the 
only sign of service Mrs. Jesson required. It was not 
enough to destroy the feebly festal air of the frill, the blue 
muslin jumper stretched without fold, without grace, on 
her round back, the black velvet ribbon clasping her throat, 
and the frills falling over her unquiet hands. 

Beyond her lay the window, its casement divisions un¬ 
curtained and thrown open. Soft, indefinite masses loomed 
up there, masses of bush and hayrick and hedges all gath¬ 
ered in the fog now steaming up, dank and miasmic, and 
dulling the lower stars, smearing the weeds in the ditches 
and the woods on the fields’ rim. 

Her restless eyes left the kettle-holder. She stared into 
the darkness. On and on ran Miss Hyde’s voice. Across 
the passage Marie, in the drawing-room, was laughing. 
How Marie was laughing! 

Dido, irresistibly impelled, diverted her eyes from Miss 
Hyde’s flat bosom and turned them towards the door. Miss 
Hyde pattered to the gas-stove and peered into the frying- 
pan. 

“Doesn’t that sound cheerful?” she said. “I like to hear 
any one laughing. It makes me feel bright. I don’t like to 
feel dull. I think she’s so bright. I’ve only spoken to her 
for a few minutes but I like her. Jolly, I call her.” 

“She seems very nice,” Miss Wilson said, turning her 
back on the night and nervously regarding Dido. “But it’s 
easy for some people to be bright. I mean—some people 
have more chance of happiness than others. Everything 
goes smoothly with them, and of course they’re bright, 
they’re attractive—they—they’ve got all they want—every- 


NOCTURNE 49 

thing seems a joke to them—they—they don’t have disap¬ 
pointments to bear.” 

She plucked at the table’s edge. Her mouth had grown 
shapeless, and, striving to compose it, she stared blindly at 
the floor of the passage beyond the open door. Her head 
quivered and the slight movements of her neck disturbed 
the flaccid extension of the frill; it trembled along its ir¬ 
regular edge. 

A gentle vibration passed through Dido. She gazed at 
Miss Wilson, and answered her, conscious all the time of 
the steady, yellow gaslight, Miss Hyde arrested over the 
frying-pan in a disturbed stare, Marie’s laughter. 

“Of course. One doesn’t always feel so festive. I sup¬ 
pose there’s some credit in being jolly when you’ve nothing 
to make you, though!” 

She must laugh to round off that inept reply. She didn’t 
know how to answer Miss Wilson. What was it she ought 
to say? Tragical person, standing there in those ghastly 
clothes! What was wrong with her? So Marie was an in¬ 
fluence here as well. Nothing was quite the same since 
Marie’s arrival, not even here. How impossible it was to 
enter into the feelings of this class of people! They were 
so crude. How melodramatic Miss Wilson looked. Poor 
little thing. 

Very softly Miss Hyde gazed at the other woman. “Oh, 
that’s very true. There are times when you feel so bright 
you could do anything, and at other times you’re so dull you 
don’t know what to do with yourself. Every one’s like that. 
At least that’s my experience. You’ll find Miss Jesson has 
her dull times. You see.” 


50 


SECRET DRAMA 


She had, while speaking, become again so aware of the 
delights of this exchange of opinion that her look of sym¬ 
pathy, of solemnity, had been evanescent. She ceased to 
regard Miss Wilson; with a lamentable difference from Miss 
Wilson’s bowed and tragic head, she positively jigged up 
and down on her large feet, she nodded her peaked gray 
head, her brows astir and emphatic. 

“You see. We all have our disappointments. . . 

Miss Wilson lusterlessly glanced at Dido and away again. 
“I know. But some people feel more. I mean, there are 
sensitive people who feel things that others are too—per¬ 
haps I oughtn’t to say it”—she laughed with an effort—• 
“too thick-skinned to notice. And the more you feel the 
more you seem to have to put up with. People don’t think 
you have feelings. I’ve nothing to say against Miss Jesson. 
She was very nice to me. Of course it’s nice to hear her 
laughing. I dare say she’s happy. She looks happy . . . 
very nice . . . jolly. . . .” 

Her voice died away. Her struggles for an air of detach¬ 
ment, of ease, were almost dreadful. Her other desire to 
fling something at them, boldly, impressively, something 
whose nature they could not determine, was no less visible. 
They did not speak. Marie was no longer laughing and 
they stood in silence, in a little square of strong light be¬ 
tween the darkness of the unlighted passage and the discreet 
kindling of the moon-haunted night. Without expression 
Dido looked at Miss Hyde. 

Miss Hyde’s sallow wedge of face was dulled. Her eyes 
were quite still. They were not fixed on Miss Wilson, but 
on a space of the opposite wall. Her hands, spread flatly 


NOCTURNE 


5i 


on the front of her skirt, looked as if struck with sudden 
stiffness. The perfect immobility of her small body was 
distressing because it was unnatural. She seemed fixed in 
the contemplation of some truth. Her eyes were grieved; 
they were full of an involuntary reproach. Streaked disks 
of color began to burn on her cheekbones. 

She spoke in a subdued voice, turning her head aside; 
the tone, the movement, both suggesting a desire to escape 
scrutiny, a sudden perplexed doubt as to the wisdom of 
her past expansion. 

“Yes, that’s true. She looks happy. Yes.” 

Their glances, guarded, doubtful, swept Dido’s face and 
were withdrawn. 

Miss Hyde examined the fish. “Nearly done.” 

Dido, in her discomfort, caught at the information. “I’ll 
go and wash my hands, then. We shall be down at once, 
Miss Hyde.” 

She smiled at them both and went out. 

What in the world did it all mean—Miss Wilson’s agita¬ 
tion and rambling statements and forlorn looks, Miss Hyde’s 
sudden stark silence in the face of a shattering idea—their 
mutual‘distrust of herself? All enigmatical. The steady, 
swift flowing of an emotional and secret life was audible to 
her. She almost looked on the dark surface of it. But she 
did not understand. Those two women, left now in their 
self-created silence, were at an immeasurable distance from 
her, mysterious, provocative, impenetrable figures! How 
little she knew the people she lived with! What tremendous 
storms burst at her side, and the chances against her hear¬ 
ing one detonation were uncountable! But she had percep- 


52 


SECRET DRAMA 


tion of the existence of Miss Wilson’s lurid reveries, and 
Miss Hyde’s sudden apparitions. Exciting, astonishing, and 
all generated out of Marie’s arrival. 

How quiet the house was! 

The most desirable and engrossing place on earth at that 
moment was the house. She went through the shadows and 
weak sprawls of light on the staircase with the sure, firm 
step of a supreme content. 


IV 

They saw no more of Marie that night. Their sitting- 
room was at the front of the house, overlooking the garden 
and the high road from its eastern window, and having 
from the northern a view of the Green and Hirst Hill and 
Broad Down. They could not, therefore, see what happened 
on the verandah which faced west. Much was happening 
on the verandah, they decided. If Marie was not visible 
she was very audible. They heard her laughter, her im¬ 
perious speech, her resolute step; Mrs. Jesson’s voice; 
bumpings, rustlings, thuds. Their own conversation died 
away. They sat at the table, Dido gazing at the flowers 
there, Hilda amazedly intent on the door, almost foolish in 
her continual smiling perplexity. 

From the fragments of speech they caught and the char¬ 
acter of the noises, they could only think that Marie was 
transporting her bedding to the verandah. She was going 
to sleep out. 

This was so. Miss Hyde told them later that Miss Jesson 
had erected a camp-bed on the verandah. Miss Hyde, 


NOCTURNE 


53 


peering zestfully from the shelter of the rose pergola, had 
seen Marie sitting on the bed in a black-and-yellow dress¬ 
ing-gown, her position revealed by the friendly light of a 
candle which stood on a table by the bed. Mrs. Jesson re¬ 
clined in a camp-chair near her. 

The two girls as they went upstairs could hear the mother 
and daughter talking. When they entered their room they 
heard more clearly still, through the small casement window 
in the western wall, Marie’s cadenced and unhalting voice. 
Glancing out of the window they saw the unsteady, blown 
space of light shifting on the gravel beyond the veran¬ 
dah. 

“It’s foggy too!” Hilda exclaimed. 

“Intensely modern,” Dido stated. 

“And it would be noisy, I should imagine. Supposing 
the horses come in like they did the other night!” 

They looked at each other and irresistibly laughed. 

“It will be only one more hectic night added to her ex¬ 
periences!” Dido cried. She threw towels over her arm. 
“I shall be out in ten minutes,” she said, alluding to her 
bath. 

She went out, and padded down the passage, a tall, subtly 
virginal figure in her pink dressing-gown. 

Beyond the reach of that merry voice, she thought the 
house seemed very quiet. There was a line of light under 
Miss Wilson’s door, but no sound to betray Miss Wilson’s 
presence in the room. Halfway down the passage a ghostly 
lividness lay on the more definite outline of the ceiling and 
wall—the weak light flowing through the uncurtained bath¬ 
room window across the room. 


54 


SECRET DRAMA 


As she neared it a door a little beyond it opened and Miss 
Hammond, fantastically splashed with light and shadow 
from the candle she carried, came out and with a dragging 
movement approached Dido. 

She wore a long nightgown and very large dark slippers; 
her hair was loose but fell back mistily from her uplifted 
face, a swollen face quite colorless and humid where the light 
was on it but receding into deep shadow; her eyes were not 
visible, only the hollow blackness of their sockets. 

Involuntarily Dido paused. 

Miss Hammond came up, staring rigidly. She shifted the 
candle, and th ; white of her eyeballs stirred. 

“I thought it was Mrs. Jesson at first,” she said, smiling, 
“but it’s Miss Baird.” 

“Yes. I’m just going to have my bath. Did you want 
the bathroom? I can easily wait.” 

“No, I don’t, thank you. I’m just going downstairs to 
get my biscuits. I forgot them. So silly of me.” Looking 
straight before her she stepped past Dido. 

“Can I get them?” 

“No, thank you. I can get them.” She turned her head 
towards Dido and stood still. Her swollen, sickly face was 
without expression, her eyes lay with a peculiar white clear¬ 
ness in the brown pits above the arch of her cheeks. 

Dido, smiling at her, had a sense that something was 
impending. She felt a little bewildered. Again she doubted 
Miss Hammond’s perfect sanity. 

Then Miss Hammond smiled. She moved closer; in a 
soft, secret, not quite agreeable voice and with a steady, 
wan stare she said: “I’m afraid I give you all a lot of anx- 


NOCTURNE 


55 

iety. So good of you to look after me. I feel so safe with 
all the good friends round me.” 

She stopped speaking, but she did not move away. Her 
words had been affirmatory, but there was no assurance in 
her intent eyes, no sign of an invincible security in the bear¬ 
ing of her thick body, her immobile head. She held the 
candle without a quiver; she waited, with an illusion of 
suspended breath, of a mental as well as physical immobil¬ 
ity. 

Dido’s bewilderment and curiosity deepened. For a mo¬ 
ment she did not answer, and in that moment, her per¬ 
ceptiveness unworried by any sound or any movement, she 
divined the tense, the supreme, suspense of the old woman 
before her. It was inexplicable to her, but that it existed 
was for the time sufficient. She answered without hesita¬ 
tion. 

“Not at all. I’m afraid I don’t do much for you, but if 
there’s anything I can do ... I shall be pleased.” 

Miss Hammond said instantly: “So kind of you. I’m so 
thankful. I feel so safe. What a lot of kind girls there 
are!” 

She smiled. Tranquilly she walked to the top of the 
staircase. She stretched out her hand and spread it flatly 
on the wall, with great caution she began the descent. Dido 
saw her profile, thick, impassive; her gaze, still expectant 
and prepared. Slowly the staircase rose above her until 
only the even wall met Dido’s eager look. 

How still the house was now, and how apparently com¬ 
monplace! 

“Most extraordinary set of people!” Dido thought mer- 


SECRET DRAMA 


56 

rily, taking long strides to the bathroom. “She must be a 
little cracked. Every one seems to be laboring under de¬ 
lusions or obsessions. Most interesting.” 

As she dived into the bathroom there was a sudden emis¬ 
sion of sound from the rooms beneath, hurried, bright, ex¬ 
cited sound; Mrs. Jesson speaking in a happy voice, Marie 
shouting, Miss Hammond squeakily protesting in a kind of 
amicable desperation—jolly! jolly! 

Oh, that was what Miss Hyde would say! Dear Miss 
Hyde! Dear all of them! 

She banged the bathroom door to with a sudden urgent 
desire to affirm her own existence, her presence, in the 
house. And the sound cracked splendidly on this layer of 
local quiet. Dido laughed. 


CHAPTER IV 


LETTERS 

i 

Dido Baird had, at twenty-eight, the mental, moral, and 
physical freshness of a young girl. She was charming, but 
it was a less arresting and habitual charm than Marie’s. 
She was simpler, and in her conversation and movements 
and expression there was not the fullness which made Marie 
seem so brimming with experience. With Dido one came 
often upon blanknesses, but Marie produced ever for the 
inquiring mind what was almost an excess of activity. Next 
to her Dido seemed only partially to have lived, to be living. 

But she was both vital and intelligent. She lived fully 
every moment of her life. It was merely that the moments 
were innocent and simple, the good, charming, sheltered mo¬ 
ments of a young girl dwelling under the gaze and within 
the careful control of her parents. Dido loved her parents; 
she had a clear, inflexible creed of filial, religious, and social 
duty. At twenty-eight she limpidly presented her heart, 
her mind, to her mother and father, she was modest, chaste 
in instinct and thought, delighted by admiration, but happy 
when she was without it. Social questions interested her, 
but she unconsciously differentiated herself and her family 
from the people whose material conditions seemed so dread¬ 
ful to her. She could not grasp the fact of identities and par¬ 
allels in their natures and her own: she accommodatingly 

57 


SECRET DRAMA 


58 

imagined them as being less perceptive, less sensitive, than 
herself that she might retain her feeling of joyous ease in 
the midst of their palpable difficulties, and when, therefore, 
the illusion she had created round them was broken and the 
real personality revealed momentarily to her and then lost 
through her imperfect response, she was captured, she was 
engrossed, she dreamed of a state of sympathetic insight 
which was quite possible and which would surely intensify 
the charm of existence. 

Most of her views on life were theoretical. She had only 
met people who temperamentally and morally resembled 
herself, people, cultured, agreeable, altruistic, who lived by 
the orthodox conventions, who had immovable ideals of 
conduct, whose morality was based on the Pauline tenets. 
Dido did not analyze herself thus, she analyzed other people 
far more than herself; she was not egotistical. Books, 
music, art, the drama, acquiescing in the judgment of her 
parents, going to church, teaching little boys Bible stories on 
Sunday and cricket on Thursday, walking, tennis, talking, 
loving and admiring and smiling at Hilda—this was life for 
Dido. 

Opportunities for loving and tenderly laughing at Hilda 
had been given constantly only during the last three years. 
Before that time Hilda—motherless since she was six—had 
lived with her father and three maiden aunts in a suburb 
of south-west London. When Mr< Nicholls died Hilda 
came to the Bairds’. 

She was far less modern than Dido; she read less and 
thought less. She stood, the product of those suburban 
women’s care, their incorruptible dogmas, their unconscious 


LETTERS 


59 


deficiencies, their infinitesimal concerns. She had been ma¬ 
tured by her father in nothing but patience and resigna¬ 
tion, qualities unnaturally strong in her, through his selfish¬ 
ness, his perfunctory affection, and his consistent neglect. 
She could not love him with any feeling of joy, her love for 
him could only wound her in its unfruitfulness; she could 
not fervently love those three dry, virtuous old women; she 
began to live emotionally only when she came into the 
bright, animated zone of Dido’s personality. She loved 
Dido. She dwelt, mildly, ecstatically contemplative of 
Dido’s mental flights, her physical prowess, her allusive ver¬ 
bal displays. She did not understand, she could not men¬ 
tally accompany, Dido, but she loved her. 

ii 

Mrs. Jesson threw off the single sheet which covered her 
and sat up in bed. She looked round the room, vacantly. 

The bridge party at Mrs. Everett’s last night had made 
her so late for bed that she had not troubled to take her 
hair down and put it in its usual curl-papers. The pads she 
wore protruded with a dissipated and negligent air from the 
end of one sunken roll, her hair-net clung to her moist 
brow, her sleepy, half-closed eyes looked old and good amid 
the heat, rouge, and powder of her big face. She yawned. 
Her fat white arms lay on the counterpane, the yellowish 
hands loosely curled; there was something suave and tender 
in the thickness of her body solid under the scanty 
nightgown, something impressive and touching in her bulk 
and strength. 


6 o 


SECRET DRAMA 


The morning was very warm, very still. She became 
aware of this with a feeling of pleasure. She got out of 
bed, stood undecided on the rug for an instant, the elemen¬ 
tary garment floating round her massive legs, and then sat 
down on the edge of the bed and for a little while thought 
only how pleasant the warmth was, silkily stroking her skin. 

Gradually she awakened. The deep quietude, the unend¬ 
ing peace, the blandness of the entering air seduced her into 
a perfect physical lethargy. Nothing stirred. Nothing 
was awake. She could sit here, like this, for a long time 
yet. She could muse over and make coherent the different 
thoughts and feelings which had flashed on her last night. 

A motionless, extensive white figure with eyes like dark 
little flames burning with life, she began to think. 

“Marie looked very pretty last night. She knows how 
to dress. No one looked like her. She’s so artistic. I 
should never have thought of venturing on a dress like 
that. I should have said it was showy—those great stripes; 
but I’ve no taste—not till I see a thing on. I can’t imagine 
an effect. I could see when it was on how beautiful it 
looked. When I was young we always said pink for 
brunettes and blue for blondes, but she can wear blue. She 
looked beautiful.” 

She had a long pause, her eyes moving round in her un¬ 
moving head, her fingers noiselessly tapping the bed. 

“I didn’t like to see her with Mr. Lucas. I know I’m 
very silly. It’s only natural that all men should be attracted 
by her, but I don’t like to see her—even in the same room 
—or—or anywhere near a man like that.” Her fingers 
tapped faster, her nostrils dilated. “I’m old-fashioned. No 


LETTERS 


61 


one thinks anything of things like that nowadays. I don’t 
want him in the house. I feel—it’s a contamination—to 
have my Marie, so pure—and beautiful—and good—near 
that man and all the dirt he’s passed through.” 

She reared her disorderly, vigorous head, her broad feet 
stirred. 

“Mr. Ainger talked to her a lot too. 

“I must prepare myself for losing her. I can’t wish her 
anything better than a happy marriage—with a good man— 
even though all the light goes out of my life the day she 
tells me she's engaged. I mustn’t be selfish. I know I 
think too much of what I want, not of what’s good for her. 
I mustn’t. Marriage—wifehood—motherhood—it’s the only 
life for a woman. I would give it to her. 

“But not Mr. Ainger. I know there’s no danger with 
Mr. Lucas. I haven’t seen the man yet I would give her 
to. No one’s good enough.” 

Softly a door was opened along the passage. She heard 
the pad of slippers past her door. At the same time she 
heard sounds in the kitchen, distant, faint. 

“I must dress,” she thought. 

She stood up and, without further mental activity, but 
with a feeling that life was becoming increasingly momen¬ 
tous, painful, sweet, put on her dressing-gown and went out 
to the bathroom. 

Later, when she had returned and was doing her hair 
at the dressing-table, she thought again of the bridge party. 
She mechanically parted and rolled and pinned her hair 
while all the time gazing at Mrs. Everett’s ancient drawing¬ 
room—at Marie, indolent and splendid in a blue-and-gold 


62 


SECRET DRAMA 


chair, sweepingly moving her bare arms, turning her black, 
round, charming head with a peculiarly somber effect in the 
bright lamplight under the low-beamed ceiling; she saw 
Marie’s narrow, sparkling stare given superbly to Tommy 
Lucas, to Jimmy Ainger, to Mrs. Everett, sometimes with a 
momentary incredulous wonder to Dido and Hilda, hardly 
ever to herself. 

Mrs. Jesson paused, as Marie had done, when mentally 
she surveyed the cousins. 

“Very nice girls,” she thought. She tried to remember 
Dido’s dress, to catch the quite strong effect Hilda had had 
on her, but their figures grew loose and thin, they faded in¬ 
effectually before the flaming reality of Marie. No one had 
seen, completely and distinctly, anything but Marie. 

She dressed in a kind of dream, stiffly clasping and ar¬ 
ranging things, while she gazed at the oak paneling dark 
along the distempered walls, the bending attitudes of the 
men, the dim hangings in the high niches of the windows, 
the fascinatingly natural and firm movements of that one 
observed figure, Marie’s. 

Upon that dream intruded gently a consciousness of 
voices on the verandah—Marie’s voice. 

Her movements were accelerated. In a few minutes she 
was going, without thought, with a supreme hopefulness, to 
the verandah. 


in 

Quietly she opened the drawing-room door and stepped 
into the room. The glass door which led to the verandah 


LETTERS 63 

was open and she could see Marie, and, in a camp-chair be¬ 
side her, Dido. 

Marie was still in bed, but only half reclining; she was 
supporting herself on her elbow and she held before her lips 
a large, shallow cup of tea. Her hair, still in last night’s 
coils, was very much disturbed and had sunk heavily to the 
nape of her broad neck; on the wide crown of her head it 
looked flat and damp. Her features also looked damp and 
her face flashy and reddened, but her lustrous eyes gazed 
across the cup at Dido with a perfectly awake and nimble 
air; she was not drinking the tea, because of her absorption 
in something she was telling Dido. 

On the table beside her was a tray, an acetylene lamp, a 
box of chocolates, and a book. Above these things rose the 
shoulders and fresh, attentive face of Dido, who, wearing 
a sports coat and carrying a stick, seemed to have just re¬ 
turned from an early walk. 

Neither of them had noticed Mrs. Jesson and she did 
not at once go to them. She stood, slowly amassing the 
details of the scene, her heart responding to the influence of 
each separate thing her eyes or her mind observed. 

Marie was speaking to Dido without a pause, with much 
animation, but her voice was low, and in the enthusiasm 
of her most emphatic points she did not raise it. Mrs. Jes¬ 
son could not distinguish any of her words. She saw only 
that Marie, who had been home but four days, was confid¬ 
ing something to Dido, admitting her to the intimacies of 
her feelings, her thoughts; she drank tea hurriedly and then 
went on in her rapid, repressed tones, not looking very 
much at Dido, looking radiantly ahead most of the time, 


SECRET DRAMA 


64 

but occasionally giving Dido a bright, pressing glance—a 
glance which said, “Well, what do you think—what do you 
think? This is me—how are you going to take me?” 

A keen pain stabbed through Mrs. Jesson’s heart. Her 
lips parted in the sudden pain of her jealousy. She was 
rendered quite incapable of movement. Not once during 
these four days had Marie spoken to her like this, baring 
herself, awaiting, with however much confidence, judgment. 
Not once had she exhibited this ease, this leisureliness, this 
air of liberation. With her mother she had been terse, she 
had been remote, as if impatiently she looked from afar 
off at her mother’s world and, recognizing her mental dis¬ 
tance from it, resented her enforced physical presence in it. 
She had been dry, sealed; she had wanted to get away, and 
she had done so at the earliest possible moment. 

Mrs. Jesson drew a long, tremulous breath. She closed 
her eyes. 

Instantly she opened them again and found the scene un¬ 
changed. But as she began to reproach herself Marie 
turned and saw her. 

At once Marie became silent; her mouth closed, her eyes 
grew impenetrable. Then deliberately, with a prudence 
which quite chilled the mother, she smiled. Without ceas¬ 
ing to smile at Mrs. Jesson she put down her cup and made 
a slight silencing motion of her hand towards Dido. Her 
lips moved rapidly, but Mrs. Jesson could only just hear her 
voice. 

Then she called out: “Good morning. Why did you think 
it necessary to get up? You were told to stop in bed till 
ten. You can’t have any of this tea. Miss Baird, is your 


LETTERS 


65 

life made a burden to you by an obstinate parent who de¬ 
terminedly upsets all your calculations, no matter how much 
she’s bullied? ... You may come along and sit down, 
mother. I’ll accept you with resignation, but if you want 
tea you must order fresh. There’s only half a cup left, and 
I’m going to have that.” 

She burst into resonant laughter. Dido had quietly re¬ 
moved the book from the table and was holding it. She now 
stood up. 

Mrs. Jesson, looking at the book, came out on the veran¬ 
dah. “Marie told her to move the book,” she thought. 
Aloud she said, unable to resist smiling as she received 
Marie’s casual but good-tempered glance: “I don’t want any 
tea, Marie. I’m sorry if I’ve upset your arrangements, but 
I woke up. . . . Good morning, Miss Baird. You’ve had 
a walk early.” 

She observed with pleasure Dido’s clear and modest look, 
her “Yes, just up Broad Down,” and then the lowering of her 
gaze to Mrs. Jesson’s neck, her motionless attitude, her 
round, firm face, and the straight hair combed austerely 
behind her ears. 

Already Mrs. Jesson was moving out of gloom. Gazing 
at Dido she ceased to feel jealous. Dido, though she held 
the book, and thus silently encouraged Marie in deception, 
in cruel and lacerating reserves, seemed without mistrust, 
without triumph. She did not exploit her privileges, she 
did not look at Mrs. Jesson as at an intruder, perhaps an 
enemy. “Every one does what Marie tells them,” Mrs. 
Jesson thought. “You can’t refuse her anything.” 

Now that book was the symbol of Dido’s subjugation. 


66 


SECRET DRAMA 


In Dido’s stillness, and happy waiting, she discerned respect 
for herself, liking, sympathy. And these in any one young! 
She wanted to speak to Dido, to convey her pleasure in the 
friendship with Marie, but she was so long searching for 
words, she stood smilingly staring with such an aspect of 
intending no remark, that Dido looked up, smiled, and with 
a short little bow went off round the house. 

“Well?” Marie said at once, “what are you going to do? 
Have some tea?” 

“Yes, I think so. I’ll tell Nellie. Is there anything you 
want, dear?” 

“No, there isn’t. O-h-h.” Marie yawned and stretched. 

After a timid glance at her, Mrs. Jesson went in. 

Marie finished her tea, and yawned and groaned and ate 
biscuits until her mother returned. 

“I had a perfectly hectic night,” she said, then. “First 
Bessie came prowling round to know if I wanted another 
wrap. I told her to go to the devil—and she did”—Marie 
shouted with laughter—“looking cut to the quick; as if any 
one could be civil at two in the morning! And I slept for 
an hour and then three horses paddled in. I simply plunged 
out of bed and had to chase them over the lawn with no 
slippers. Fortunately it was brilliant moonlight. Who is 
it leaves the gate open?—Here’s your tea. And letters! 
Ah! . . . May’s scrawl, and . . 

She stopped so suddenly that Mrs. Jesson, who was 
watching Nellie Wilson set a second table for her, turned 
round. Miss Wilson turned too. She looked at Marie with 
dim, serious eyes. Then quietly she went away. 

Mrs. Jesson, waiting for the tea to draw, her legs rather 


LETTERS 


67 

widely open, her outspread hands resting on her knees, a 
length of striped petticoat disclosed, watched Marie peace¬ 
fully. 

The letter in May’s handwriting lay on the bed. Marie 
was reading the second one. To Mrs. Jesson her face looked 
inscrutable. Mrs. Jesson poured out some tea, sipped it, 
ate a biscuit, and noted, all the time, in tranquil ignorance 
as to their meaning, the small smiles which came on Marie’s 
mouth, her moments of almost dark resolution, the continual 
glitter of her eyes, so young and fresh between the dull, 
thick eyelids. She wondered whom the letter was from. 

Marie finished it. She read May’s, placed both on the 
table, and looked out absently across the garden. 

For a few moments she remained silent, musing. Then 
she turned her little, conscious, sparkling eyes on her mother. 

Mrs. Jesson, crumbs on her mouth and blouse, her jaws 
moving with a placid and ruminative air, smiled at her. 
She did not venture to speak. 

“Well, you’ve got to be shocked and you’ve got to weep 
at some time,” Marie said, “so you may as well be both 
now. Do try to be as intelligent as possible, and as little 
Mid-Victorian. I wouldn’t inflict the shock on you, only if 
I don’t you’ll say something embarrassing in your ignorance 
and give us all a strained moment. You’ve a perfect genius 
for doing that.” 

She laughed good-naturedly, looking kindly at her mother, 
even softly. 

Mrs. Jesson put down the cup she had just raised. Her 
hand shook violently; her eyes had an arrested look. With¬ 
out a change of position or color she expressed the stillness 


68 


SECRET DRAMA 


of fear, the instinctive prudent stillness of an animal in 
the presence of an obscure danger. Marie had something to 
tell her. “Shocked,” “weep”—those words banged in her 
head like thunder-claps. 

“All right, all right,” Marie cried, contemptuously pitying. 
“Why will you get in a panic at once? I’m here, and well , 
and looking forward to great times. There’s nothing to 
weep for, only you will weep because it’s the conventional 
Mid-Victorian thing to do. It’s not my action which will 
shock you.” 

She was sitting up in bed now, dancingly twining her 
fingers together, a sensuous smile drawing her upper lip 
under her nose. 

A little reassured, Mrs. Jesson wanly smiled. “You 
frighten me so, Marie. Tell me what you mean. I’ll try 
and take it in—in your modern way. If it’s not bad 
news . . .” 

“Good Lord, no. It’s May. Have you suspected that 
she’s entertained a warmer feeling for Louis Gosden than 
mere friendship or did your innocence dream of platonic re¬ 
lations only? . . . Now don’t say you’ve forgotten who 
Louis is—you met him and his wife a dozen times when May 
and I were at Kensington. Well—him. May’s succumbed. 
That’s all. I thought it would be sooner. Drink your tea 
up and declaim your morality and have done with it. May’s 
coming down to-night, so you’ve till five to get a real sane, 
unmoral view of the matter.” 

Mrs. Jesson, with an automatic obedience, looked at her 
tea-cup, but she could not lift her hand. There was no 
movement, no definite image, in her mind. A darkness had 


LETTERS 


69 

descended upon her; it rolled voluminously over her heart. 
Only in the movements of her hands and lips, in the blind, 
narrow gaze of her eyes at the polished and clean-cut holly 
leaves of the hedge, did she betray her intense struggle 
against that darkness, her endeavor to reduce it to a sharp, 
nameable emotion. 

Greatly timid and shrinking, she turned to Marie. Marie 
was still smiling, a subtle sensuous smile. Enlightenment 
came to Mrs. Jesson. 

“Marie, I don’t like to hear you talk like that,” she said, 
pulling at her skirt with trembling hands. “It—hurts me.” 

She could not go on. Vast, vague shapes swept before 
her mental vision, and, sitting with a motionless body, with 
steadily plucking hands, with mumbling movements of lip, 
she panted after them, she traversed, breathless and swift, 
great tracts of darkness until words began to form in her 
head and she thought—it was so dreadful to hear Marie talk¬ 
ing like this, scorning the old standards of right and wrong, 
condoning sin, implying that it was not sin. She didn’t 
care about May—how wicked she was! She did care. Stop 
to analyze this, when fears for Marie crowded in her heart! 
Impossible. She swept May aside. She stared at the terror 
of Marie’s ultimate actions, at the nightmare of Marie’s 
emancipation. 

Then she became aware that Marie was speaking. She 
lifted one hand and rubbed her damp lips. Naively with 
the other she pulled her blouse away from her round bosom. 
She was so hot; she felt that her face streamed with per¬ 
spiration. 

“Wait, darling,” she said. “I feel confused. It seems to 


70 


SECRET DRAMA 


me a dreadful thing. I can’t look at things like you. I 
can’t think that your way is right. We are told in the 
Bible . . ” 

“Oh, mother, don’t preach” Marie sat forward with a 
bump which made the bed creak. “For heaven’s sake spare 
me what Paul said or thought. I look at things in a per¬ 
fectly natural, unmoral way. Louis’ wife is a beast; May 
is the one woman for him—there’s a perfect sympathy be¬ 
tween them; they’ll stick to each other all their lives, prob¬ 
ably; they don’t marry merely because he has a wife living. 
If she wants a divorce they will marry. Do remember 
people are made of flesh and blood. I’ve seen May perfectly 
rock when he’s been near her—the call of the senses. She 
can’t help it—it’s perfectly natural.” 

Mrs. Jesson did not speak. All her face was crimson; 
even her eyes looked reddened; there was something strained 
and unnatural in their fixity as if they were under a spell. 

Compressing her lips, Marie gave her mother an irritated, 
dark stare. Then, after a brief pause, she began to smile; 
she suddenly laughed. 

“Well, that’s the news which was to shock you. Now will 
you weep? You will really be very comforted. I’m going 
to convince you of my orthodoxy.” 

Mrs. Jesson’s eyes moved round to her, her mouth 
twitched; she gazed at her with a simple and profound 
perplexity. 

Marie banged the letters on the table with a violence 
which rattled the china. “This second communication,” 
she said, “is from a friend of mine—Mr. Ramsay. I’ve 
met him during the last year. He’s an awfully nice boy. 


LETTERS 


7 i 


And he writes to say he’s taken lodgings here for three weeks 
—his holidays have started—and he’ll be round to-morrow 
—to see me. Does this meet with your approval, my puri¬ 
tan mother? His intentions are quite honorable.” 

She burst into prolonged joyous laughter. 

Mrs. Jesson again endured the sensation of impact. The 
appalling creations of her fancy were shattered. She felt at 
first conscious of nothing but Marie’s supreme elusiveness. 
She felt as if she were pursuing Marie, and then, when 
that perverse complex disquieting being seemed under her 
gaze, the vision was demolished, was shown to be an illusion, 
and another flashed upon her. 

“Mr. Ramsay?” she echoed. “I don’t know him, do I?” 

“Haven’t I just said I’ve met him during the last year! 
Unless your astral body’s been projecting itself into my 
flat you do not know him. I hope, for your sake, it hasn’t. 
It would have had some shocks! . . . Oh, mother, you are 
lovely! Your faith in me is truly touching. I believe you 
suspect me of the most scarlet immoralities. Finish—that— 
tea—and be sane. I’m trying to penetrate you with the 
fact of my imminent engagement to Hobart Ramsay— 
we call him Hob. He’ll probably propose during these three 
weeks, and unless I change my mind—I may find I prefer 
Tommy Lucas!—I shall accept him.” 

Slowly, with an almost childish labor, Mrs. Jesson built 
up out of these statements a full and beautiful certitude. 
Some one loved Marie—Marie loved him—they would 
marry. 

Now she became governed by an immense excitement. 
The thoughts which rushed into her mind were not new, 


SECRET DRAMA 


72 

they were not vague; they were the deeply pondered 
thoughts of her solitudes. In the midst of her agitation 
she had a sense of the familiarity of this moment. She had 
constructed it so often, speaking in dispute, in approval, 
in gladness, with an invisible Marie, that she was dumb 
only while she assured herself of its reality. 

Then she spoke in a deep and solemn voice. 

“You make me very happy, Marie. I would rather see 
you married. . . . But tell me about him. Is he good? 
I would give you—gladly—though I should suffer—to a 
good man. . . 

She began to move her feet, her lips, and, convulsively, 
her hands. She did not look at Marie. She looked before 
her, silently struggling. It was a tremendous struggle be¬ 
tween her violent emotions and the exigencies of her tem¬ 
perament which compelled these emotions to be hidden and 
for ever unexpressed. 

From the heart of her battle with tears, with outcries, 
she heard Marie speaking. 

“Oh, he’s awfully nice,” Marie said. “Quite good too! 
I’m sure you’ll take him to your heart. He’s younger than 
me—he’s about twenty-eight—but I don’t think I mind that. 
He’s quite charming. Of course he worships me. Oh 

yes-” She paused, dreamily looking downward over 

her suddenly quiet fingers. “I think I shall have him. I 
like him . . . Tut he loves me,’ as Browning says. Pots 
of money. He’s with his father, who’s a solicitor, but his 
mother has the money—a frightfully bourgeois person, but 
rolling in money from a defunct uncle or somebody, and 
mercifully generous—which makes one pardon her Walden’s 



LETTERS 


73 

Jacobean Suites, etc.—and Hob has a tremendous allowance. 
He’s university and the father is cultured, so it’s all quite 
good . . . quite good.” 

“And you love him, Marie?” 

“Oh!” With a gay shriek Marie leapt off the bed. “Ro¬ 
mantic woman! Love! What are those lovely lines of 
Austin Dobson’s?” Broadly smiling, poised on the red- 
tiled floor with a bird’s look of being quite tense with the 
power, the intention, of flight, she declaimed: 

“ ‘Loved if you will, she never named it so, 

Love comes unseen—we only see it go.’ 

Lovely!” 

She laughed loudly, contemplative in her absorbed appre¬ 
ciation. Then she caught up the letters, plunged her head 
downward to her wristlet watch, and howled musically 
again. “Ten o’clock! Oh! I must fly. I’ve a thousand 
things to do. Don’t let any one come near the bathroom 
for the next three-quarters of an hour. I’m going to wash 
my head. May will sleep out here with me, so don't get 
making a bed for her. Don’t do anything till I see you 
again. Heavens, there’s a boy at that cottage window! I 
forgot they could see across. Lord! how corrupted he’ll be! ” 

Erect, smoothly swift, uncontrollably laughing, holding 
her white nightdress up to her bosom, she stepped into the 
drawing-room. She vanished from Mrs. Jesson’s gaze. 

IV 

For some time Mrs. Jesson did not move. She passed 
through moments of vacuity, of dark incertitude, of happi- 


74 


SECRET DRAMA 


ness, of apprehension, of profound sadness. Whole ages 
seemed to sweep over her head. When, at last, with a 
deep sigh, she looked observantly round her this illusion 
of the lapse of vast spaces of time was not destroyed. She 
gazed back, with a sense of loss, at irrecoverable periods 
of life; she felt as if, since she came on to this verandah, 
she had died and was now reborn to new conditions of 
existence. Most strange and lonely she felt. 

She watched a cart go up the main road, along another 
road the movement of a human figure, dark, small, pointed, 
oddly stiff and meager under the uprising of the hills. The 
August sun stared from a sky full of light, remote, and pure. 
A network of sound was flung across the quietude—voices, 
footsteps, the opening and shutting of gates. She became 
impressed with the notion of life, of action. It impelled 
her to rise. And directly she was standing, the fact of her 
own existence became beautiful and inspiring; she had a 
moment of perfect happiness. Her pain, her dread, her joy, 
her hope—they were all precious to her. 

Soundlessly she shaped the words: “I am a mother. 
Therefore I suffer. But it is better to be a mother—than 
anything—in the world. Marie will marry. Thank God. 
I wish—I had—Henry with me now. How glad he would 
be. Perhaps he sees.” 

Exalted, rapt beyond consciousness of her surroundings, 
she gazed at the white, burning sky, not clearly visualizing 
her husband, but, with a heightened perceptiveness, cap¬ 
turing the faint murmurs, the delicate contacts of possible 
presences. Was he perhaps near her, informed, approving? 

She dropped suddenly back into prosaic activity, without 


LETTERS 


75 

any sense of jolt or strangeness. She smiled naturally, even 
with humor. 

“I mustn’t stand dreaming here. I shall have Nellie hunt¬ 
ing me up to ask about lunch.” 

She picked up Marie’s tray and, thinking that it was the 
day for turning out the dining-room, went quickly into the 
house. 

She was very busy all the morning. She gave Nellie 
the orders for lunch, she rebuked a little sternly the daily 
housemaid who had cracked a teapot stand, she remon¬ 
strated with Bessie Hammond on her needless labors in 
dusting the dining-room; she watered the young cabbages, 
picked French beans and apples, pulled up some young 
onions, and trussed a duck. For two hours she was mov¬ 
ing about, her hands occupied with various matters, her 
eyes bent on different shapes and colors. And everything 
she touched, everything she scrutinized, came afterwards in 
the encounters of the following days to be evocative of a 
darkness, a radiance, the mental atmosphere wherein she 
had stood when she dealt with the thing on that morning. 
For days afterwards she could not enter the china cupboard 
without all the soft colors, the round, white stare of many 
plates, coming at her through the dun shade with the right¬ 
ness, the warming charm, she had seen in them when she 
had looked in with her mind whispering, “Marie says he’s 
good. I can’t believe she’s going to be married.” 

For a flashing instant, before she noticed the teapot stand 
forlornly set on an empty tray with a white line across its 
blue and green tiles, she had been impressed with the de¬ 
lightfulness of those rows of plates, those funnels of cups, 


SECRET DRAMA 


76 

those squat or slender jugs. Distant, immeasurably distant, 
was the thought that Marie would have a home, and china. 

In the same manner the scullery table, the old discolored 
basket wich she had used for the beans and the onions, the 
pale-green mounds of the apples on the larder shelf, were 
all intimately associated with her feelings on that morn¬ 
ing; she looked at them tenderly as being touched with 
the beauty of her emotions; they were almost sacred to 
her, invested with a peculiar dignity. 

At the time she was scarcely conscious of any of these 
things. When at the end of the morning she found the 
duties were done she had a faint wonder—when had she done 
them? She had never before been so aware of our dual 
existence. Competently, with but little faltering, she at¬ 
tended to household matters and all the while she covered 
long, intricate tracks of thought, she entered heavy nights 
of fear, and came out into spaces of light and tranquillity, 
she strove, she dreamed, she hated, she loved. 

Was this man good enough for Marie? Did Marie love 
him? How dreadful it would be to lose Marie! And yet, 
had she not always wanted Marie to marry? Yes, she was 
glad, she was quite sure she was glad. 

But Marie would go away; her mother now would be 
less than ever to her; she would love her husband and her 
children. Marie was lost now, irrevocably lost. 

Wicked, selfish old woman to think like this! Marie’s 
happiness. That was all that mattered. If Marie was 
happy, why, she too would be happy. She was happy, 
now: yes, she was. Quite happy. 

Hobart Ramsay. Twenty-eight. That is, four years 


LETTERS 


77 

younger than Marie. Was he old enough? Could he at 
that age understand and appreciate Marie? 

Marie was very self-willed. Could he possibly know 
how to deal with her? If, after Marie was married, he 
failed to understand her, hurt her, blundered—oh, she 
would want to drag Marie away; no man should make 
Marie miserable. Quarrels—dissension—divergence. All 
possible, all threatened. 

But if Marie did not marry! Marriage held perils 
enough, but unmarried Marie was still more terrifying. 
These terrible modern ideas! Modern ethics—they appalled 
her. May Bessant, that nice girl. And according to Marie 
it was not sin, May was not to be looked on with pity, with 
compassion, with, if one was very stern, condemnation and 
rejection. All she did was “natural.” But were there then 
no laws recognized, no laws of restraint? Surely to yield 
was to be fleshly; it was debasing the name of love. No, 
Marie said, and others too, that true morality had nothing 
to do with forms and ceremonies; that the relations be¬ 
tween May and this man were a great deal more truly moral 
than the relations between this man and his wife. Or 
something like that. No doubt she had got it wrong. She 
didn’t understand. She clung to the simple—or did it only 
seem simple?—beautiful creed of marriage and faithfulness 
and a love spiritualized—the kind of love and life she had 
had with Henry. She might be wrong—the world would, 
one would imagine, progress, ascend—but she could not 
look on May other than as a fallen woman. She could 
hardly bear to think of her with Marie; in this union 
with Louis Gosden she could see only laxity, animalism. 


SECRET DRAMA 


78 

In the past, such matters were not mentioned in the hear¬ 
ing of unmarried girls—well, thirty-two was young—and 
yet here was Marie calmly discussing it. 

Marriage—marriage. She would not be happy, she would 
not feel safe till she saw Marie married. 

“I would rather see her lying dead at my feet than as 
May is now.” 

Marie must marry. She emerged from her raiding emo¬ 
tions with this certitude immovably and grimly formed. 


CHAPTER V 


HOBART RAMSAY 

i 

All through the next day she was made physically tired by 
the feeling of suspense. She thought that any moment 
Hobart Ramsay might come; and when they had had dinner 
and were in the garden again and he still was not arrived, a 
little unease oppressed her. Did Marie, perhaps, imagine 
him to be more intensely admiring than he actually was? 

Marie had dressed her in the afternoon. Nearly an hour 
Marie had spent on her, brushing and arranging her hair. 
“There is a way of doing it which makes you look a grande 
dame,” Marie said, “and I can do it,” fastening and settling 
the gray silk dress and the little gray-and-pink brocade 
coat, powdering her face, scenting, providing with handker¬ 
chief. 

Hot, smilingly frank and simple, in her magnificence she 
sat in the garden with a book. She did not dare to loll! 
She sat woodenly, keeping her coiffure away from the chair- 
back. Sometimes she forgot and settled herself easily. 
Then Marie shrieked: 

“Mother! Will you get up and sit so that the hem of 
your skirt isn’t bunched up under you, and so the coat is 
flat? Cross your ankles. If you don’t your petticoat shows 
at the back.” 


79 


8o 


SECRET DRAMA 


She obeyed, smiling gently. Her discomfort was extreme, 
but she forgot it in her long reveries when she sat bolt 
upright, her arms, bare from the elbow, stretched across her 
knees and looking warm and rosy under the startling white¬ 
ness of her powdered face; her thoughts insensibly acquir¬ 
ing the slowness, the calm, of the still day, of the garden 
which lay hazy and motionless in the thick air, the bright 
flower-heads standing without a quiver, the trees mute and 
seeming permanent in beauty, beyond the mutations of 
time or season. 

She did not know whether she was happy or sad. She 
had sunk into a fatalistic peace. 

But after dinner, when it was a little cooler, she felt the 
need of movement. Momentarily forgetful of Marie’s orders, 
she pinned up her dress and went down the lawn with a 
watering-can, naively displaying much of her black stock¬ 
ings and her petticoat. 

At the other end of the garden Marie and May were 
sitting together, smoking and talking. Several times she 
looked over at them with trouble, with dread. 

Miss Bessant betrayed no signs of having passed recently 
through a severe spiritual conflict. She was large and 
beautiful; there was a fine immobility about her body; it 
was grandly modeled, having a silencing effect on the 
mind by the mere fact of its size and calm. Her eyes 
looked out from her broad, pale face tranquilly; her fea¬ 
tures were rather heavy with the marked lines of the Roman 
style. Her fair hair stood above her head firm and solid 
like a helmet. 

“I must be very ignorant, or very stupid,” Mrs. Jesson, 


HOBART RAMSAY 


81 


for the twentieth time that day, reflected. “At my age 
I can’t understand a young woman of thirty. I like May. 
I can’t believe—what Marie tells me. May looks at me as 
truthfully as she always did. She looks a good girl. It’s 
all—beyond my understanding. We old people don’t belong 
to the world now. I’m afraid to judge it. I’m too ignorant.” 

She heard a gay shout from Marie. Turning, she saw a 
young man, very tall, very youthful, very easy, coming up 
the lawn. 


n 

Marie, delicately buoyant, went to meet him. “Here you 
are. Good evening. Come and be introduced. Isn’t mother 
lovely! For one hour I adorned her, and now she meets 
you mostly in a petticoat and with wet hands and an earthy 
smear on her nose. Oh, mother, you always disgrace me. 
Mr. Hobart R.amsay—intimately, Hob or Hobbie—my 
mother.” 

She slipped behind Mrs. Jesson, clasped her by the 
arms and thrust her at Hobart, who was laughingly, dra¬ 
matically, bowing. 

“How do you do?” he said. “May I be allowed to water 
for you? I can.” 

Mrs. Jesson laughed, convulsively she pressed his hand, 
she gazed at him, her mouth open a little, her eyes moist 
and passionate. 

She was tall, but he was able to look down at her slightly. 
He was slender, with a high head and a long, pale face. 
He moved lightly and with alertness, with an indescribable 


82 


SECRET DRAMA 


air of energy and zest. His large, wide-open, pale-blue 
eyes had a rather wan look; under fair brows and between 
lids a little reddened and almost bare of eyelash, they gazed 
at her with a kind of strained, fixed candor. She decided 
that he looked happy but tired. He was large featured 
and there was character in his expression, but she was 
most keenly conscious of his palely bright and humorous 
youth. She felt herself to be in the presence of a most 
delightful expansiveness; he virtually offered himself to her 
for alliance, mental exchanges, and sympathies. And he 
was modest, too, and unconscious. 

She liked him. 

She spoke in incoherent greeting, laughing, and not ceas¬ 
ing openly to gaze at him. When Marie led him off to the 
imperturable Miss Bessant, still smoking in splendid and 
ponderous repose, Mrs. Jesson did not for a moment move. 
Then, with an effort, she followed Marie and Hob—Hob! 
What a funny name!—thinking easily. 

“I certainly do like him. He has a good face, an honest 
face. He looks modest. I mustn’t judge hastily, but his 
appearance is very favorable. He only looks a boy. I had 
pictured some one older for her. But it don’t matter—it 
isn’t one of the essential things.” 

The conversation came to her, obscurely allusive and 
broken. 

“What time did you get home that night?” Marie was 
asking him. 

“With the milk,” Miss Bessant drawled. 

Hob spun round to her, comically protesting. “With 
the cream,” he said. 


HOBART RAMSAY 


83 


They were silent for an instant, smilingly at ease. 

Then Miss Bessant brought out, unruffled but firm, “Oh, 
damn these wasps!” 

Marie, with her most marked air of joy in every detail of 
life, turned delightedly to Hob. “Did you know that the 
queen wasp lays forty thousand eggs a year? I believe 
that’s the figure.” 

Hob fixed his young equally delighted eyes on her. 
“Makes quite a habit of it,” he commented. 

They all laughed. 

Mrs. Jesson stopped. Hob was not aware of her ap¬ 
proach, and she again inspected him. 

Her mind kept repeating: “This is the man Marie will 
marry. He’s come down to propose to her.” 

She gazed at him stonily, unable to believe in his reality. 
He moved and spoke and was expressive, but nothing could 
penetrate her. Her eyes wandered from him to May and 
Marie and back to him, and she felt only a great helpless¬ 
ness and blankness. She dimly told herself that she had to 
be very watchful, very keen, very wise. 

Marie looked at her. May happened to be speaking, and 
Marie, unobserved by Hob, softly smiled at her mother, 
pressing her with the significance of his presence here. 

That placid smile beamed through Mrs. Jesson’s mental 
fog and dispelled it. With her answering smile she gave 
to Marie pledges of support, of protection, of leadership. 
She gazed at Hob with an almost fierce concentration on 
his fitness for one office—the office of providing Marie 
with continual happiness. 

Marie said he loved her, and Marie loved him. 


SECRET DRAMA 


84 

She looked for signs of love. 

She could not with certitude say he displayed any. He 
was very easy and charming. With his mobile brows he 
expressed tolerance, rebuke, sympathy; he shuffled his feet 
in absurd jocosity; he looked at both women with a kind 
of humorous pleasure; and once or twice when Marie was 
speaking to Miss Bessant, he darted a serious glance at 
Marie. His face then appeared firm and intent; she could 
not say that his expression was passionate; he had rather, in 
his pallor, in the narrow masculine lines of his head, an 
aspect slightly frigid. She was baffled. 

But Marie disclosed a fine assurance. She talked a 
great deal; she turned her head and neck in pretty smooth 
gestures of assent or denial, she rested her eyes on him in 
the naturalness and clarity of perfect confidence. 

“Even their love-making’s different,” Mrs. Jesson thought. 
“He looks at her a good deal. I think I’d rather he was 
serious and seemed to—to observe her. His love is more 
likely to be lasting. He only looks a boy; I had pictured 
some one much older.” 

Hob had assented to a game of tennis. He and Marie' 
now came up the lawn together. For the first time he 
became aware of Mrs. Jesson’s nearness. 

“But I promised I’d water the cabbages!” he exclaimed. 

Mrs. Jesson almost maternally regarded him. “No, you 
play tennis. I haven’t much more to do.” 

He seemed to stand prepared to serve her, a little stoop¬ 
ing, and peculiarly light in attitude and expression. 

Her heart throbbed. Oh, she did indeed like him. Her 
face began to work. Incomplete thoughts, too swift to be 


HOBART RAMSAY 


85 


transfixed, whirled in her head. She was sensible of the 
supreme joy and agony of her condition. One hand groped 
out towards him. 

His very faint surprise was caught by her and at once 
she became dignified, simply his hostess. 

She talked to him about tennis while Marie went indoors 
to change her shoes and bring rackets and balls. She 
thought that while he modestly allowed her to direct the con¬ 
versation he was also a little wary, a little withdrawn. Had 
she betrayed her ardent interest in him? she wondered. 
She had, troublously, the sense that he had leapt back 
beyond reach, beyond scrutiny. Was he then not ready or 
not willing to be assessed as Marie’s lover? 

Her uncertainties roughened her voice and made her 
glance hard and proud. Her accidentally angry brows deep¬ 
ened the grimness of her look. A silence fell between them. 

Then Marie returned, and Hob smiled at Mrs. Jesson. He 
clicked his heels together and stiffly exhibited himself: “May 
I remind you, Mrs. Jesson, that I haven’t played for months 
and that I am going to do great things? Astonishing things.” 

She laughed a little and he went off to help Marie tighten 
the net. 

They were distracted from this by an accusing prolonged 
“Ah-h! ” followed by a plaintive “Charming scene! Bucolic! 
No, no, idyllic! Figures for a Greek fresco. Don’t move, 
I beseech you.” 

They all turned. Jimmy Ainger and Tommy Lucas were 
advancing up the lawn. Mrs. Jesson frowned. 

“It’s that maniac Jimmy Ainger,” Marie called to May; 
“I’ve told you about him.” 


86 


SECRET DRAMA 


“You have. Keep him away from me. I don’t like 
the looks of him/’ Miss Bessant replied. 

Mr. Ainger stopped. “Cruel!” he moaned. He threw 
up his hands, bent his knees slightly, and gazed sky¬ 
ward. 

“Oh, don’t be such a fool, Jimmy!” Marie shrieked. 
“Come and be introduced to Mr. Ramsay. Make him 
behave, Tommy.” 

“I can’t, really I can’t,” Mr. Lucas rapidly protested. 
“I’m such a peaceable johnny, I can’t use coercion.” 

Mrs. Jesson watched them shaking hands, talking, gesticu¬ 
lating. Most earnestly she regretted this visit. “I should 
have liked Mr. Ramsay to have had a quiet time alone with 
Marie. ... I wish she wouldn’t call them by their Chris¬ 
tian names. She hasn’t seen them for two years. . . . Mr. 
Ainger has only come to see her. I don’t like him. But if 
she loves Mr. Ramsay it won’t matter.” 

Jimmy Ainger was about forty. He had upstanding gray 
hair; his very wide head was flattened at the back and 
looked, in profile, curiously triangular; his eyebrows were 
arched and amazed above widely set black eyes; there was 
good-nature in his fleshy chin and jaw, and resolution in 
his firmly closed lips. He took very short steps, moving his 
legs stiffly, a concentrated but placid expression on his 
face. 

Mr. Lucas might have been a few years older. His most 
noticeable characteristics were the squared elbows and 
bowed legs of the horseman. He wore a little gray Homburg 
on one side of a small, fair head. His eyes were greedy 
and incessantly searched the faces and figures of the women. 


HOBART RAMSAY 87 

Mrs. Jesson, glaring and stationary, surveyed him as if he 
were an unclean insect. 

They talked for a little longer and then Marie gave them 
rackets. They had come in tennis shoes, prepared for a 
game. They took their places, Marie and Hob together. 
Mrs. Jesson sat down beside Miss Bessant. Jealously she 
surveyed them. 


hi 

A little later Dido and Hilda returned from a walk. 
As they came through the gate Hob cried, “Game!—and 
set!” 

Jimmy portentously laid his racket on the grass. He 
stuck out his chin at the heated Mr. Lucas. “Ye’ve praap- 
erly spoilt my evening, my man!” he stated. “Doiint pro¬ 
voke me. I am calm. I’m quite calm—but . . .” 

“I apologize. I told you I couldn’t play.” Tommy 
uttered rapid extenuations. 

“There’s Miss Baird,” Marie said. “Perhaps she’ll take 
Tommy’s place. Miss Baird!” 

Dido came up. Hilda, all in white, her eyes dark and 
long in the white oval of her face, remained near the edge 
of the lawn, sharing with Dido the scrutiny of“the men. 

“Do you play tennis, Miss Baird? Oh, good! Will you 
take Mr. Lucas’s place? You see him thoroughly and de¬ 
servedly crushed. You know Mr. Ainger. Judge him 
gently. He is not ever thus. Mr. Ramsay—Miss Baird. 
You don’t mind playing? It’s awfully good of you. You 
have shoes?—and a racket. Oh, admirable person. Does 


88 


SECRET DRAMA 


your cousin play? . . . Well, will she mind joining us 
later? We’ve simply no use for her at present.” Marie 
laughed. “But make her bring a chair. She can criticize 
Jimmy and administer consolation to Tommy. There’s 
Christian charity for you, Tommy.” 

“Oh, you know, I’m overwhelmed, I really am,” Tommy 
exclaimed, thrusting forward his little head to gaze at 
Hilda. 

Hilda, to whom only parts of this speech had been audi¬ 
ble, but who understood from their glances that she was 
being proffered to Tommy, laughed uncertainly, turning her 
innocent, inquiring eyes from one to the other and redden¬ 
ing dimly. Tommy always confused her. Dido, even now in 
the midst of swift impressions, wondered whether Hilda 
really had heard of or suspected the kind of reputation 
Tommy bore. 

It was a lightning speculation amid vivid if imperfect 
thoughts. As she answered Marie, smiled, shook hands with 
Hob, and acknowledged May Bessant’s friendly motion of a 
cigarette, she knew that she admired Marie’s dress, that she 
admired Miss Bessant, and that an involuntary ripple of 
happiness flowed through her as she spoke to Mr. Ramsay. 
She had an instant of suspended thought, of forgetfulness 
of the others, as she smiled at him. There was nothing 
sexual in her pleasure. His humanity, his newness, perhaps 
a little his appearance; the unforeseeable surprises of life, 
so infinitely seductive—these were the things which pro¬ 
duced her expression of delight, of cordiality. 

She was wearing a fawn wool coat, and a tweed skirt. 
Her face was flushed and soft under her wide hat brim, 


HOBART RAMSAY 


89 

very round and girlish in its immobility above her long 
throat. She seemed wonderfully fresh; there was something 
arresting in her joyous and candid smile, in her tall body. 

“Are you a good player?” she asked Hob. 

“Not at all,” he replied, gazing at her with a slowly fad¬ 
ing smile. 

“Is that modesty or the uncompromising truth?” she 
said, showing her teeth and lowering her eyes. 

“The truth. I haven’t been able to get much practice. 
I’m in very poor form.” 

Dido looked at him. His smile had quite vanished. He 
looked back with the empty, pale stare of a statue. 

“What a funny young man!” she thought. She turned to 
Marie. “I’ll get my racket and change my shoes.” 

Jimmy extended his arms as she passed him. “Hist! 
We are observed, but—help me roll him up. Puppy! I 
say it again, he’s a puppy!” 

Laughing, Dido looked back at Hob. His eyes were on 
Marie. As she gazed he darted a sharp, critical glance at 
herself. She left him menaced by Jimmy, laughing. 

“A very abrupt young man,” she thought. “I wonder 
if he thinks Marie pretty.” 

And there was Hilda, smiling, interested. The progress 
down the garden into Hilda’s presence became, oddly, like 
the passage from one realm into another. She entered 
Hilda’s presence with a feeling of home-coming; Hilda 
seemed possessed of a wonderful stability. Dido did not 
analyze this feeling, but obscurely she knew that it was 
the thought that she had an orbit of her own and an un¬ 
critical sharer and guardian of it that made these flights 


go 


SECRET DRAMA 


into other orbits and other systems so smooth and lovely. 
If one were alone, how the sense of adventure then would 
be mixed with the knowledge of risks and uncertainties! 
But there Hilda very palpably stood, like a quiet, immov¬ 
able shore after the thrilling caprices of the open sea. 

Dido smiled at her. “I’m going for my shoes,” she ex¬ 
plained. “You’re to take a chair where Miss Bessant is and 
console Tommy.” 

“Oh dear!” Hilda laughed. “I think I’d rather not. I 
never know what to say to Tommy.” She continued laugh¬ 
ing. 

“I’m afraid you can’t get out of it,” Dido said. “And 
you needn’t say anything. He merely wants you to admire 
him. I suppose you can pretend you do? It will be pre¬ 
tense, I suppose?” 

Hilda was laughing very much now. “Yes, it will be pre¬ 
tense,” she said decisively. “I don’t like him at all. But 
if you say I must go?” 

“I do. You look awfully nice. Tell me what you think 
of the newcomer, Mr. Ramsay. He merely glares at me. 
I’m sure in that hat you ought to thaw him.” 

Hilda, quite red with pleasure, courageously picked up 
a chair. Dido went in, smiling, almost running. 

When again she came up the lawn, swinging a racket, 
hatless, she found them all gathered round Hilda. Hilda 
was sitting by Mrs. Jesson. She was laughing, but not 
with understanding; she uncomprehendingly gazed at them, 
a defenseless look, a stupidity, which was right and lovable, 
about her white brow, her closely pressed knees and hands, 
her narrow shoulders. 


HOBART RAMSAY 


9i 


Dido’s happiness was shaken. They were teasing Hilda. 

She immediately became antagonistic to them. She 
descried in their dissimilar bodies something dark and ugly. 
A few moments before there had been harmony and fair¬ 
ness about them as they stood in the rich evening, concerned 
with her, inviting her into their amusement, but now it was 
as if something had been peeled away from her eyes, some 
generous idealistic veil, and there reality was bared—they 
were gross, disproportionate, mean, unpleasant. 

She quickened her pace, her mouth set, her eyes stern. 
She would not have Hilda laughed at. Simply because Hilda 
was slow and simple, did not swear nor make “fruitily” 
allusive remarks, displayed embarrassment and unsophis¬ 
tication; Hilda, star-like . . . 

She swept into the group, unaware that Hob was watch¬ 
ing her, aware only of Hilda’s appealing and hopeful glance. 

“Miss Baird,” Marie cried, “these wretched men are 
shamefully teasing your cousin. Do come and support her. 
They are perfectly idiotic.” 

Dido looked at her. Was Marie ally or was she insin¬ 
cere? 

Marie’s eyes were interested and kind. “She’s subtle,” 
Dido thought, and turned militantly to the principal aggres¬ 
sors, Jimmy and Tommy. 

Jimmy besought her with his hands. “Now don’t be 
biased, Miss Baird,” he said in a perfectly reasonable voice. 
“Come with an open mind. I say—and I have a reputation 
for veracity—I merely say that I saw Miss Nicholls taking 
a stroll on the Green this morning in her kimono and with 
no shoes or stockings. That’s all. I said she looked charm* 


92 


SECRET DRAMA 


ing. I saw it from my bedroom window. And Miss Nicholls 
denies it—flatly and—note this—with an incriminating agi¬ 
tation.” 

“I wasn’t even up at the time,” Hilda’s high, earnest 
voice assured them. 

They all laughed. Dido felt the supreme detachment of 
herself and Hilda. She could not help laughing a little, 
though she looked tenderly at Hilda. 

“The best thing to do,” she thought, “is to answer Jimmy 
in the same strain, but I don’t think I can be daring easily 
enough. It would be so awful to stumble.” Aloud she said 
crisply, “Hallucination.” 

“All men are liars,” Miss Bessant commented, with heavy 
resignation. 

“Solomon said that,” Marie cried, “and he was a wise 
man.” 

“Support us, Mr. Ramsay,” Jimmy said. “Crush them 
with a word.” 

“I dare you to,” Marie challenged him. 

Hob looked quickly at them all. His glance impercept¬ 
ibly lingered on Hilda and Dido. Then he spoke with his 
eyes on Jimmy. 

“I’m out of this. I offer my remark merely in the interest 
of accuracy. Don’t accuse me of partisanship. ‘I said in 
my haste that all men are liars.’ ” 

“Thank you!” Jimmy clasped his hands with a sigh of 
relieved tension. 

“It’s the only time they speak the truth when they speak 
in haste,” Miss Bessant placidly shouted. 


HOBART RAMSAY 


93 

Tommy and Jimmy howled her down. They turned on 
her, leaving the others silent, and inattentive to them. 

Marie was thoughtfully looking at Dido, who looked 
back, her intuitions sharply plying about Marie. “She 
isn’t hostile,” Dido thought, “but she wonders over us as 
if we were phenomenal creatures.” 

Dido became a little irritated. It was not pleasant to 
think that Hilda and herself were, because of their slower 
wit, their freshness, their inexperience, objects of wonder 
and tolerant pity to Marie. She felt suddenly hot. Mis¬ 
trustfully she glanced at Hob. 

She met his inexpressive gaze. He at once looked away, 
not apparently discomposed but impenetrable, spiritually 
as well as actually, silent. She felt most keenly that he 
was not communicating with her. He seemed deliberately to 
be reserving himself. She continued to watch him, coolly 
approving his appearance, and with her curiosity stimulated 
by his manner. It was almost rude of him so firmly to 
abstain from addressing her. 

Then she became aware of Marie’s scrutiny. She looked 
back at Marie, scarcely able to conceal her annoyance at her 
own simplicity. So openly to exhibit interest in Hob! 
What would Marie think? 

Marie was standing perfectly still. She suggested an 
almost tense concentration on Dido’s emotions. She scru¬ 
tinized Dido without a shade of softness. She looked a 
mature woman, ruthless, penetratingy and suddenly ar¬ 
mored in dignity. 

“I’m quite as clever as she is,” Dido thought, “and 


94- 


SECRET DRAMA 


Hilda is immeasurably above her in goodness, but we shall 
both be extinguished by her merely because she not only 
sees through us, but because she is experienced enough and 
hard enough and confident enough to know how to take 
advantage of her knowledge. I can see through her, but I 
can’t—I don’t dare—attack her. I can only guard myself. 
Hilda can’t even do that. And I can only by not betray¬ 
ing what I think and feel. I must be uninteresting if I’m 
to escape—analysis.” 

So this was what intercourse with Marie amounted to! 
Perfect passivity, a continual reticence—these were im¬ 
posed on her if she were not to quarrel with Marie or 
ignominiously be assessed and classified by her. Dido was 
sobered. Gravely she looked down. Contact! The beau¬ 
tiful, diffident advances into another’s mind, the firm mar¬ 
riage of the one mind to the other, even the equal skirm¬ 
ishes, the brisk rivalries, the merely superficial association! 
They were all delusions. The realities were misinterpreta¬ 
tions, a good-natured contempt. 

She lifted her eyes. Hob was watching Hilda. Before 
her brain had fully realized this Jimmy turned round. 

“Well, are you ready?” he asked. “I suggest you have 
Miss Baird for your partner, Mr. Ramsay, and Miss Jesson 
and I will join forces.” 

He was no longer jesting. He spoke crisply, staring at 
Marie. Hob looked from Marie to Dido. 

“How rude of you, Jimmy!” Marie protested. “We par¬ 
ticularly secured Miss Baird for you, so that you and she 
could be revenged on us.” 

“Oh, I waive my revenge,” Jimmy answered. “I mean 


HOBART RAMSAY 


95 

nothing personal, Miss Baird. I merely make a sugges¬ 
tion.” 

He took one or two uneasy steps, still looking at Marie. 

Marie looked straight ahead. “I see no reason why we 
should change,” she said. 

Jimmy paused before her. “No reason, no,” he as¬ 
sented combatively. “Call it an impulse, if you like. I 
don’t pretend to be reasonable. I merely wish that we 
should change partners. Unless, of course, Mr. Ramsay 
absolutely declines to have Miss Baird.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Marie exclaimed. She turned to 
Hob. 

“Ridiculous!” Jimmy echoed the word with a strange in¬ 
flection. Marie glanced at him impassively and then once 
more looked at Hob. She was quiet now, dignified, and 
enigmatical. 

There was an uncomfortable silence. Dido’s enjoyment 
returned*. Tension! She unmistakably divined it, and 
again the sense of adventure moved her. She forgot that she 
had resolved to be prudent. Gaily she said: 

“You must be a frightfully formidable player, Mr. Ram--' 
say, for Mr. Ainger to shirk facing you like this.” 

“Disgusting, isn’t it?” Hob answered, but he looked at 
Jimmy, not at her. “Be a man!” he coaxed Jimmy. 

Jimmy didn’t answer. He seemed to stand over Marie, 
threatening her, appealing to her. 

But why did Hob so persistently avoid acknowledging 
Dido? Dido watched them all. Emotional silence! Her 
mind sped, wonderfully swift and eager, seeking the secrets 
of these motionless, unconsciously dramatic figures. She 


SECRET DRAMA 


■96 

darted an expressive glance at Hilda. Good gracious, how 
dense Hilda looked! She hadn’t, bless her, seen anything. 
Another instant and they would all be plunged into a 
“scene.” She felt it. The air was electric. Some primitive 
emotion would break bounds and they would no longer be 
civilized, supple. 

It was Hilda who mildly averted that tremendous cli¬ 
max. 

“Dido plays awfully well,” she said, with an earnest glance. 
“I’m sure you needn’t be afraid she won’t be a good part¬ 
ner, Mr. Ainger.” 

Dido laughed. They all laughed, and their laughter, as 
hers, was kind, it was sympathetic. Jimmy instantly capit¬ 
ulated. With what inward annoyance? Dido wondered. 

“Miss Baird, I accept thee,” he said. 

“I have to justify that testimonial, haven’t I?” Dido 
answered. She saw that Hob was smiling at Hilda. 

The next moment she was walking to the farther court 
with Jimmy. Hob’s smile, his avoidance of herself, Marie’s 
silence and gravity: they arranged themselves in some deep 
chamber of her mind, important, momentous things. Less 
definite than they, and evanescent, was a wonder at Mrs. 
Jesson’s submissive quiet; in the group and yet speech¬ 
less, without influence. 

Then her mind became, superficially, at rest. She ran to 
her place, thinking only of the game. As she turned and 
faced the net she received across it Hob’s measuring glance. 
She thought, “He’s interested in Hilda and me.” 

The firm evenness of the lawn, the gauzes of light cast 
over the hills; no sun, no shadow, the only movement the 


HOBART RAMSAY 


97 

ineffable noiseless play of swallows above the pond—how 
happy she feltl 


IV 

Mrs. Jesson presently said to Hilda, “I always think girls 
look so graceful playing tennis.” 

Hilda smiled. “So do I. And Dido plays awfully well.” 

Mrs. Jesson looked at her, perceiving her as a real per¬ 
sonality and not merely as one of those shadows which 
hovered behind Marie’s vital figure. She distinguished in 
Hilda’s placid face sympathy, good sense, deference. These 
were nice girls. Not modern. 

Miss Bessant was asleep; Tommy was watching the 
tennis. With a sudden feeling of weariness she abandoned 
her close, anxious search after the emotions implicitly ex¬ 
pressed in Jimmy’s demeanor, in Hob’s, in Marie’s. She 
endured a moment of insight—Marie was hard and selfish; 
she had for her mother no love, no consideration; Mr. 
Ramsay appeared neither infatuated nor excited. Let them 
all go, unsympathetic and indifferent as they were. This 
good young girl waited contentedly for an exchange of 
thought. Her brown eyes expressed liking and interest. 

Mrs. Jesson stared at Hilda. “I expect you miss your 
uncle and aunt,” she said. 

“We do rather.” Hilda continued to gaze at her, unsmil¬ 
ing but expressing a perfect receptiveness. 

Mrs. Jesson fixed her eyes on some distant point of space. 
“I shouldn’t have come back from America,” she said, “but 
Marie thought she’d like to live here. When my husband 


SECRET DRAMA 


98 

died I thought I should spend the rest of my days in 
America. I am an American, you know—though I’ve lived 
here over thirty years. But I’ve never felt at home here. 
All my people are in America. Mr. Jesson and I went over 
once, but of course, he was a doctor, his work was here. 
But-” 

She had a long pause, her lips moving under her motion¬ 
less eyes. Equally motionless, Hilda’s brown eyes watched 
her, without impatience, with no lessening of their interest. 
She seemed without preoccupations. 

Mrs. Jesson went on, in the same level tone as if there 
had been no silence: “I always said that when he died 
I would go back. I did go. But Marie prefers this place. 
At least for a time. I don’t mind where I am so long as 
I am with her. I would rather be in America, but not if 
she keeps coming to England. I miss her so much. She 
is very full of life, and enthusiasm, and she tires of one 
place. She’s young. I feel I don’t care where I am now 
so long as she stays with me.” 

Again she paused. 

“Of course. You must miss her dreadfully.” Hilda’s 
tone was not perfunctory, not formal. Mrs. Jesson caught 
the vibration of a sensible, sincere estimate of the situation. 
She smiled at Hilda. 

There had crept into the fading splendors of the evening 
a blander and simpler quality. She felt eased. She had 
somehow gained dignity. The feeling of isolation no longer 
oppressed her. She had been drawn into the scene and un¬ 
consciously she had a sense of an underlying permanent 
harmony and peace. A gentle hopefulness pervaded her. 



HOBART RAMSAY 


99 


She spoke again. “When you love, when you’re a 
mother, you get fanciful. You think of all the dreadful 
things that might happen. I often think—how small our 
faith is. We should be so much happier if we could only 
say meaning them, those lines—of Browning—‘God’s in 
His heaven, all’s right with the world.’ ” 

“Yes,” said Hilda. 

Mrs. Jesson looked at her in the serenity of an enormous 
pride. How smooth and vague Hilda appeared; virginal, 
unproved, with no rich memories of pain and bliss. Her 
luminous face, her slender arms, her narrow body which 
knew neither wifehood nor motherhood—how incompleted 
she was, how pitiably ignorant. 

“But to be a mother,” Mrs. Jesson said, “is to know the 
greatest happiness—and the greatest suffering. It’s the only 
life for a woman. I hope it will be your life some day.” 

She sat in her beautiful arrogance, noting Hilda’s re¬ 
sponse to this. Hilda colored lightly. Her brows shook 
and she made a little startled movement with her eyes. 
She looked as if she wanted to laugh girlishly, but was re¬ 
strained by a perception of something touching and impres¬ 
sive in Mrs. Jesson. She was obviously incapable of an¬ 
swering Mrs. Jesson’s hope. 

Then Mrs. Jesson began to talk of America, of her sisters 
there, and their children. 

Miss Hammond came up the garden. She looked at the 
tennis players. Very quiet, smiling and confident, she 
moved towards Mrs. Jesson. 

Mrs. Jesson turned to her, “Taking a little walk, Bessie?” 

Miss Hammond piped back: “Just a little one. So nice 


IOO 


SECRET DRAMA 


to see them playing tennis, isn’t it? I like to see people 
enjoying themselves. It makes me feel happy—all the 
kind friends. They deserve to enjoy themselves.” 

She paused by Mrs. Jesson. She turned her humid, 
watchful face to Hilda; her eyes looked out with a peace¬ 
ful intentness from under her prominent brows. 

“I think they’re having a good game,” Hilda said, with 
her little air of finding nothing small or trivial. ‘They’re 
very well matched.” 

Miss Hammond beamed at her. “So nice for them,” she 
repeated. 

“Have you been lying down, Bessie?” Mrs. Jesson said. 

“Yes, I have. I’m nicely rested. But I thought I’d take 
a little walk round, such a lovely evening. Oughtn’t we to 
feel grateful for such lovely weather?” 

Hilda surprisedly gazed at her. 

Miss Hammond crossed the little space of ground be¬ 
tween Hilda’s chair and Mrs. Jesson’s. She fixed her eyes 
on Hilda. 

“I’m afraid I make you all so anxious,” she said. “I’m 
so sorry.” 

“No, no, really. Will you have this chair?” Hilda 
jumped up in palpable concern and bewilderment. 

“So kind of you. I’m not going to sit down. I’m just 
taking a little walk. Do sit down. I think there are a 
great many kind girls about. I feel so safe and happy.” 

“Sit down, Miss Nicholls,” Mrs. Jesson said. “Miss 
Hammond really wants to walk.” 

“Just a little walk,” thinly Miss Hammond murmured 


HOBART RAMSAY 


IOI 


and stepped away, pushing her feet along the gravel, her 
round eyes opal-colored in the delicate green light. 

“The light’s going,” Hob cried. 

“Game!” Jimmy gave back. 

There was laughter, abuse, the thud of balls. A high, 
weak voice exclaimed: “Oh, they’ve finished. What a 
shame.” 

Miss Wilson and Miss Hyde were standing near the 
pergola. Miss Wilson, finding herself examined, flushed, 
and laughed foolishly. 

“You should have come out earlier,” Marie said, with a 
good-natured glance. “Do you play?” 

“A little—not very much—I mean; I haven’t had many 
opportunities of practice. But I like to watch it.” Miss 
Wilson very quickly ran a locket up and down its length of 
ribbon and gazed timidly at Marie. 

Marie smiled and then turned away. 

“She’s nice to that class of people,” Dido thought. 

It was a spontaneous acknowledgment of virtue in Marie, 
but her mind was still full of the game, and neither Marie 
nor Miss Wilson were more than figures to her for the 
time. She too turned, animatedly addressing Hob: 

“You play awfully well. Some of Mr. Ainger’s strokes 
are extraordinary. How does he twist himself to hit like 
this . . .” She began to illustrate, but Hob said: 

“What a shame! He’s ragging—those two ladies. The 
housekeepers, are they?” He left her, and with a solemn 
dancing step walked towards Jimmy. 

How rude he was! Dido for the moment was still, her 


102 


SECRET DRAMA 


gaze on him. Then she went towards them all, her eyes 
lowered, her expression discreet. 

Jimmy was speaking to Miss Wilson. He was not “rag¬ 
ring” her. He was addressing her with a quite perfect dis¬ 
regard of her position there as housekeeper. 

“Don’t you really have much chance of playing?” he 
said. “That’s bad. It’s a good game.” 

Dido remembered her last capture of Miss Wilson’s reality 
and secret agitations. She felt now as if she and her com¬ 
panions stood on one shore and looked across a gulf at 
Miss Wilson and Miss Hyde, enigmatical and strange on 
another. But the kitchen, bronze-colored beside the weak 
kindlings of the moon in the night beyond, and the two 
women near her, and her own rush to meet something un¬ 
known and yet most passionately universal, hung vivid in 
her mind. The gulf was narrowing. She had a stimulat¬ 
ing apprehension of an impending impact between herself 
and Miss Wilson. 

Miss Wilson pressed the locket so convulsively that its 
thin sides dipped and swelled again with a sharp popping 
noise. She looked at Jimmy as if her eyes were held to his 
by an irresistible fascination. 

“Yes, it is,” she said. “But I haven’t much time. I’m 
not a very good player. I do get a game sometimes, but” 
—her eyes wandered into a sidelong and downward glance—« 
“I don’t expect to be able to play.” She cleared her throat 
Her thin, pink lips quivered. Her eyes continued ob¬ 
liquely to study the path, but she had an air of attentive 
listening. A soft, rosy glow lightly moved under her deli¬ 
cately lined skin. 


HOBART RAMSAY 


103 


“Oh, you must try and get a game,” Jimmy said, with a 
practical and pleasant glance. “Very good exercise.” He 
moved away. “You’ve tired me out, I know that, young 
man,” he said to Hob. “Of course a boy like you—you 
can keep it up indefinitely, but I’m mature. I don’t disguise 
it. And Miss Baird too—you young people—you’re too 
much for a delicate middle-aged man. Eh?” He turned 
to Marie. 

She was looking from Dido to Hob, seriously, with again 
that air of stillness and reserve. She answered Jimmy with¬ 
out moving her eyes from Hob. 

“Oh, we assessed you long ago, Jimmy, age, accomplish¬ 
ments, and all. You’re no longer a problem.” She laughed 
with sudden enjoyment, but her eyes still eagerly asked 
Hob for some response which he firmly and without clum¬ 
siness withheld. He looked round the garden with an ad¬ 
mirable effect of mental repose. 

Dido, strolling a little in the rear, reflected with a kind 
of lazy ease. Something was, if not worrying, at least per¬ 
plexing Marie; and Jimmy, now rather loudly and decidedly 
expressing his sympathy with the working-classes, suggested 
the almost irritable tension of adherence to a pre-determined 
mode of action; he was becoming aggressive as if through 
unexpected impact with obstacles not dreamt of; and Mr. 
Ramsay—Dido hung briefly in consideration, then leapt 
at the word—evasive: that described Mr. Ramsay. With 
his glance, teasing or blank, his airy walk, he impressed 
her with the idea of movement, of tactical flights, swerves, 
and advances. He seemed entirely master of himself, afld 
somehow out of reach. 


104 


SECRET DRAMA 


Lightly over the lawn Dido moved, unthinking now and 
receptive. Once she turned and saw Miss Hyde and Miss 
Wilson pacing along the path, she caught the flutter of 
Miss Hyde’s hands and the stir of her face dim and pale 
amid the shade which brownly smeared the rims of the 
garden. On her bright vacuity a thought came like a 
cloud—how isolated they looked; morally how far off! 
Miss Wilson was glancing this way. 

Jimmy had stopped talking. There was now no sound 
in the garden. The horizons were smudged and cold, only 
the west, burnt down to rusty red, looked smokeless, strong, 
beyond the mists which steamed over Rrend iHill. The 
sky seemed to be floating downwards like a smoke, and the 
light that still lingered seemed diffused by the swarthy oval 
of the Green and by the sallow fields. The figures in the 
garden had subtly changed. They looked small and slow 
and weak. In their movements there was no power. A sense 
of immense futility momentarily oppressed her. Why was 
she moving, why did they all solemnly pace forward? In¬ 
explicable mystery! How absurd they all were, pointless, 
pretentious! How tiny those sitting in the chairs looked, 
little, pointed, rigid things amid the fields wandering spa¬ 
ciously away into the fog and silence and emptiness under 
the round stare of that sky, those large, unsteady stars. 

She was smothered by the fields, crushed by the regard 
of sky and star, buried away beyond sight, beyond reach, 
by the darkness. 

Then across the greenish-yellow irradiation of the lawn 
she met Hilda’s eyes. In a few moments she would be 
alone with Hilda in the bedroom, exchanging impressions. 


HOBART RAMSAY 


105 


The house awaited them, protective, bright. Bed, a little 
read of that American humorist—or, write to mother, tell 
her what fun it was here—then sleep. 

Dido began to hum softly. 


V 

Later, in the bedroom, those confidences with Hilda 
started. 

“I like Mrs. Jesson,” Hilda said, her face mildly shining 
on Dido from between the two long falls of her hair. 
She took a hair-brush off the dressing-table. 

“I saw you were talking. What did she say?” 

“Oh, she told me all about America, and her sisters, and 
one friend who’s a Christian Scientist and another who’s an 
Agnostic. She doesn’t believe in either. I told her I didn’t. 
And about Marie. I imagine she’s afraid of Marie.” 

“Wise Hilda! I told you that the first day.” 

“I know you did. You see everything so quickly, Dido. 
I think she liked talking.” 

“And liked you too, of course,” Dido said. She tried 
to picture Mrs. Jesson in the chair, but instead another 
picture formed, evoked by Hilda’s words—Mrs. Jesson 
moving towards them, desirous of contact, having the air 
of one bearing a burden and anxious to be relieved. 

Dido expressed this feeling simply. 

“She wants to be friendly. Poor old thing. How people 
do like to pour out their hearts to you! What do you 
think of Mr. Ramsay?” 

“He seemed very nice.” 


io6 


SECRET DRAMA 


Dido turned and deliberately looked at Hilda. Something 
in her expression made Hilda have a little outbreak of 
conscious, meaningless laughter. 

“What does that mean?” Dido demanded. 

“Nothing, nothing.” Hilda was very earnest. “It was 
the way you looked at me. Do you mean anything?” 

They gazed at each other across the wavering lemon- 
colored light of the room. Involuntarily both ceased moving, 
Hilda with the hair-brush, Dido with the fastening of her 
blouse. In the house there was no sound, but there floated 
up from the verandah to the little window behind Hilda 
laughter and voices. They distinguished the words “The 
system of relativity ...” The voice was Hob’s. 

Dido laughed, sparkling a little. “Of course I don’t mean 
anything, not, at least, anything profound. Only he was 
extremely rude to me—I didn’t exist—I was thin air—and 
he smiled at you and looked at you. I mean that you’re 
the favorite.” 

“What nonsense!” Hilda laughed, looked out candidly and 
gladly at Dido, and then shook her hair over her face, and 
began to brush vigorously. 

Dido continued to watch her, not thinking, but listen¬ 
ing to the voices on the verandah. Slowly pictures formed 
in her mind; she saw Hilda in the camp-chair and Hob 
smiling at her. 

A little chill fell upon her. Pensively she lifted her hands 
to her hair, feeling for hairpins. Her gaze, still resting 
on Hilda, became cold. 

Hilda parted her hair and showed her serious face. 

“If he was rude, it must have been because he was shy,” 


HOBART RAMSAY 


107 

she said. “I should think you would be the favorite with 
any one.” 

Consciousness of the nature of her own emotions stabbed 
Dido. She had been jealous. Oh, how abominable! She 
rushed into fervent speech, her eyes caressing Hilda. 

“How absurd! I shall hate him if he doesn’t admire 
you.” 

They laughed, looking at each other, no cloud between 
them. Then Hilda again covered her flaming face with her 
hair. In a voice broken by nervous laughter she said: 

“That Miss Hammond spoke to me.” She repeated Miss 
Hammond’s remarks. 

Dido, her hands idle in her lap, listened to her, and 
listened to the sounds rising in the house. Footsteps came 
up the stairs, paused at the end of the passage, and Mrs. 
Jesson’s voice was audible. 

“Asleep, Bessie?” 

Faintly Dido heard Miss Hammond reply, “No, I’m not.” 

“Are you all right?” 

“Quite, thank you.” 

A pause, and then, “May I come in, Bessie?” 

“Yes, come in.” 

A door squeaked; she heard it closed. The strong voice 
and the breathless one, small and high, like the little cry 
of an animal, were no longer to be heard. More footsteps 
up the stairs, Miss Hyde’s voice: 

“Oh, I’m only tired. I shall be all right in the morning 
when I’ve had my salts. They do me a world of good. 
I shall be all right when I’ve had them. They cleanse the 
stomach so. That’s all I want. You don’t look as if you 


SECRET DRAMA 


108 

want anything. You do look bright. I hope you’re not 
going to have anything. They say you always look extra 
well just before you’re going to be bad.” 

Miss Wilson’s laugh. “I don’t think it’s that with me. 
I feel—well, bright.” Again her laugh. 

More robust laughter from the verandah drowned Miss 
Hyde’s further’s remarks. Dido stared at the door. 

Just beyond it, life; a deep, strong tide of emotion mov¬ 
ing there beyond that thin barrier of wood. She knew, 
without analyzing or even fully realizing her certitude, 
that the tide was to sweep through the door and invade 
the room, and submerge herself and Hilda. They would be 
in the heart of it—some day. 

And the unconscious belief pervaded her with hopefulness. 
She began to answer Hilda. She thought she was concen¬ 
trated on her own words and Hilda’s, but the profound 
parts of her being were silent, listening for the advance 
of that other life towards her own, 


PART II 


DIDO 











\ 





CHAPTER I 


INSIGHTS 

Every evening during the next four days Hobart Ram¬ 
say came to St. Hubert’s. Once, at Marie’s invitaton, he 
came to dinner: on the other occasions he appeared after 
the meal. 

He sat with Marie on the end of the lawn near the house, 
but he looked at Dido and Hilda in their chairs under 
the trees at the farther end, and they knew it; crochet, 
reading, conversation were carried on with a deeper em¬ 
phasis, nonchalantly, to conceal from each other, and from 
those two figures, their keen awareness of the glances mo¬ 
mentarily given them. 

“Is it both of us, or only one?” Dido thought. 

When they came down the garden, Hob spoke to them; 
he propounded some controversial question, and then, in 
the dialogue which followed, seemed definitely to answer 
Dido’s wonder. It was Hilda whom he addressed. He was 
natural with her, merry, and approving. 

“I really believe he does admire her,” Dido thought. 
“He glares stonily at me, but he looks at her as if he appre¬ 
ciates her goodness. It must be that, because she certainly 
isn’t brilliant with him. Well . . .he ought to appreciate 
her, though why he need snub me is rather bewildering. 
How exciting if he falls in love with Hilda!” 


hi 


112 SECRET DRAMA 

Very exciting, of course, and much to be desired. Yes. 
Hilda was so good. 

Yet Dido, sitting or standing beside them all, did not 
feel excited; she felt uneasy, most strangely full of incerti¬ 
tudes, apprehensions, and intuitive impressions. Both at the 
time and afterwards she refrained from any analysis and 
synthesis of her feelings. She fled from these with an un¬ 
acknowledged sense that they were culpable. Wonder that 
Hob should admire Hilda, a cold almost hostile examination 
of Hilda, an unwilling but irresistible study of Hob, the 
feeling that Marie was watching her, that Mrs. Jesson 
was watching her, that, inexplicably, she, not Hilda, had 
inspired a vigilance, a deep mistrust, a developing tension 
of atmosphere—these things altered for Dido the whole 
look of the house, of the land, of life itself. 

She thought that her emotions were incommunicable in 
their absurdity, but though she did not mention them to 
Hilda nor in her letters to her mother, she constantly in¬ 
dulged them; only their implications were avoided by her. 

Hob was intelligent, rather charming, and sufficiently 
subtle to retain the interest he had awakened. He talked 
well. Not to her; a flatness came in his voice and manner 
whenever he was forced to listen to or answer her, but 
with Marie, and especially with Hilda, he briskly brought 
out opinions, intentional absurdities, revelations of mood 
and traits. Actually he was not uncommon, not very clever, 
nor original, nor, essentially, subtle, but Dido had met few 
men of his age; she had only Jimmy Ainger and Tommy 
Lucas to contrast him with. Dido, admirably indifferent 
and cool, told herself that she liked him; he really seemed 


INSIGHTS 


113 

good enough—for Hilda. Hilda must have some one so 
frightfully good. 

He liked country life. ‘‘Certainly I wouldn’t stop in 
town for choice/’ he answered a question of Hilda’s. “Oh 
yes, people do, when they needn’t. I admit that. But it’s 
because they haven’t sufficient imagination to picture any 
other kind of life.” 

He appeared vague on psycho-analysis, confessed, indeed, 
to complete ignorance, and called Professor Freud’s philoso¬ 
phy, as meagerly explained by Dido, “poisonous stuff.” 

He was rather vague, too, on books. Robert Louis Steven¬ 
son he had read and Thackeray and Trollope, and a few 
modern novels—they too were “poisonous,” But music 
he loved; he talked with Hilda, who here was more ani¬ 
mated, being in a beloved sphere, of Mozart and Beethoven, 
Brahms, Wagner, Gluck, the position of the English Opera, 
the “popular” taste, all the theories and agitations and ideals 
of the modern musical world. “The public will take better 
stuff if they’re given it,” he maintained. “A lot of these 
working-fellows have a quite surprising taste—in music and 
in drama. Suburban culture. Yes, we laugh at it. I know 
we do. We’re awfully amused when Derrick or—or Cora 
gets a high-brow book out of the circulating library, or 
say the pictures aren’t enough for them and go to a reper¬ 
tory play, but it’s a good instinct. It is. I say ‘carry on, 
old fellow.’ It’s such thundering nonsense to assert that the 
people make their own music, that all the rot is poured out 
because they’re yelling for it. They aren’t. They take 
what’s given them. And an astonishing number of them 
know it’s putrid stuff.” 


H 4 


SECRET DRAMA 


Dido, considering his remarks afterwards, never dis¬ 
covered that he had said anything very profound, but she 
imagined that she had glimpsed his code of conduct and she 
approved it. She thought that he was scrupulous and ideal¬ 
istic; perceptive; mentally supple because he seemed so 
perfectly to capture the charm of Mrs. Jesson’s age and nai¬ 
vete and goodness, the rather tragic humor of Miss Wilson 
and Miss Hyde, the peculiar fragrance of Hilda’s dissimilar¬ 
ity to Marie, to Miss Bessant, to so many other women. She 
discerned too the presence in all his moods of a conscious 
criticism; he looked at the women as if valuing them by 
their harmony or discord with some secret formula. And 
he was so constantly independent; he seemed impenetrable 
to the subversive influences of sentiment or romance; he 
never talked at random; he was almost amusing in his mag¬ 
nificent self-control, in his obvious feeling of freedom. 

All these things Dido discovered in him. 

And at the same time her brain incessantly speculated 
over Marie. Did Marie think Hob was coming to the house 
to see her? Had he originally come with that intention and 
then been distracted from her by Hilda? Marie was charm¬ 
ing; she splendidly fenced with him, laughed, argued, gave 
him her gleaming long glances; but she had too, and with 
growing frequency, moments of temper when she arrogantly 
threw down her convictions for her companions’ refusal or 
acceptance, contemptuously disregarding their resopnse, 
and changing the subject, sometimes coldly, sometimes im¬ 
patiently. Then she had moments of intense, careful 
thought, her gaze wandering over their faces, her mature, 
just, troubled gaze. Why did she look like that, her body 


INSIGHTS 


115 

still, her breathing very slow and deep? And why—how 
Dido incessantly cried this in her accumulating reveries!— 
why did Marie always come at last to Dido and there re¬ 
main, inscrutably intent, as if in Dido lay her problem, her 
solution, her danger? The coldness and dignity of her 
slow withdrawal into apparent forgetfulness of Dido sank 
into the girl’s mind with the force of a physical blow. Marie 
seemed proudly to have pressed her back beyond the radius 
of Marie’s own existence; she felt, morally, extinct. And yet 
she knew, it was her one tremendous certitude, that Marie 
,had not so demolished her; that she still oppressed Marie, 
haunting her like a ghost which was not to be exorcised. 

She felt as keenely Mrs. Jesson’s inspection. Perhaps 
she felt it more keenly because it was less discreet, less 
unfathomable. Discreet! Unfathomable! Mrs. Jesson al¬ 
most ferociously assailed her with it; she stood, conspicuous, 
threatening, exhibiting to Dido her hostility, her prepared¬ 
ness. But for what was she prepared? Why did she, when 
they were talking on the lawn, come to the window and 
fasten her somber and angry eyes on Dido? maintaining 
that position, that stare, for a period which, to Dido’s narrow 
glance, seemed an eternity; or if she sat with them, still 
openly watch Dido, as somberly, as angrily, but disclosing 
also, through her nearness, a look of heroic courage as if 
she gazed on some inevitable issue, dreadful but resolutely 
to be faced? During the day, too, when Dido and Hilda 
were in the garden, playing tennis, or reading, she appeared 
on the verandah and there stood for a while, a troublous 
and yet defensive figure, watching Dido, without in the least 
trying to attenuate the strength of her scrutiny. 


ii6 


SECRET DRAMA 


“I can’t understand it,” Dido thought. “If they want Mr. 
Ramsay for Marie and are angry, why don’t they glare at 
Hilda? Why me?” 

She felt the stir of a possible solution, divined its outline 
slowly breaking to her, and mentally she averted her gaze, 
she smothered the sound of it by a voiceless cry. Dear 
Hilda, mild, complacent, unsuspicious; how she hoped Hilda 
would always be most wonderfully happy! 

Miss Bessant was with them for two days only out of 
the four. She then returned to town. 

In her place Marie had for companion Jimmy Ainger. 

Mr. Ainger was a prosperous landowner. He did very 
little work himself, going round his farms in a neat trap 
before Marie’s advent, and now, Dido silently commented, 
spending most of his time walking with Marie when she went 
to the Rowe Green Stores, or talking to her on the lawn, 
or, fluently and with varying degrees of sense, from the 
edge of her bed when he thought the verandah cooler. He 
did not, like Hob, come only in the evening; he came in 
the morning and stayed to lunch, and in the afternoon, when 
he danced to meet Miss Wilson and the tea-tray, securing 
the tray with gestures of gallantry and deference, his wide- 
open, staring black eyes fixed on her face, which reddened 
and quivered feebly as she submitted to him. 

Marie laughed at him. She received his serious implica¬ 
tions as to his presence there with an impertinently slow 
look and a roll of her eyes away from him to some far-off 
point on the horizon. Dido and Hilda rarely joined them, 
but they discussed between themselves the shades of ex¬ 
pression and posture they had observed across the garden. 


INSIGHTS 


117 

It was the only matter connected with the Jessons which 
they did discuss. They never spoke of Hob. They had 
come to have long silences with each other. Dido covertly 
watched Hilda; she knew that Hilda felt herself to be under 
examination, and was embarrassed, was fluttered. Often 
when they were alone together, Hilda, dimly flushed, gave 
to Dido her simple, almost scared gaze, and then looked 
away, keeping still, dumb, with the timid and prudent look 
of one surrounded by delicately adjusted thunderbolts which 
a breath, a motion, would disturb. Her placidity was 
shaken. She had apprehensive starts, dilations of eye, sud¬ 
den compressions of mouth. For several hours she would 
appear happy, even looking, with her smooth, full face, 

smugly satisfied, but invariably she came out of these si- 

/ 

lences, these musings, with an intelligent and disquieted air. 
Then she gazed at Dido, not simperingly, but earnestly, 
her brows arched high in question, her face somehow con¬ 
veying the fact of her complete accessibility, her readiness, 
her desire, to respond to any urgency. 

And Dido could not press her. Dido felt alone, and her 
loneliness was imposed on her; she hated it, but it was 
beyond her retention or destruction; she had passively to 
suffer it. How had it descended on her? She did not know. 
One moment and she, spiritually, had been linked with 
Hilda, moving towards Mrs. Jesson, towards Miss Wilson 
and Miss Hyde, painlessly recognizing her perfect, and per¬ 
haps endless, separation from Marie—and the next moment 
she was swept away from them all, alone, inflexibly still. 
It was horrible. To see Hilda mutely calling her, and to feel 
that those invocations came without power, without strength, 


n8 


SECRET DRAMA 


across an immense distance; that Hilda actually a few feet 
away from her, physically to be touched and held, was in 
another sphere, was lost to her, unessential—horrible sen¬ 
sation. What had awakened it in her? 

And Mrs. Jesson. Here her feelings were different. She 
liked Mrs. Jesson; she respected her, softly pitied her, and 
Mrs. Jesson was passionately receding from her, shrinking 
as if contact was a possibility not to be endured, trying to 
disengage herself and Marie completely from the atmos¬ 
phere of Dido’s mere physical existence? Why? Why? 

Vast stretches of solitude surrounded Dido. Dry, inhu¬ 
man shapes of hill and woodland lusterlessly regarded her. 
The stars could have been imagined as rattling like pieces of 
steel in an iron sky. And on the rims of her isolation 
moved figures, strange, fantastic, mysterious shadows, gesti¬ 
culating in some secret and personal action, inaccessible; 
Miss Hyde, contented, incessantly active, Miss Wilson with 
a peculiar look of intensity and dream, Miss Hammond 
brooding over her indefinite delusion, Hilda on the 
verge of union with another—Hob’s—personality. And 
how fundamentally alone they all were! Between them 
there was no complete understanding. At any moment 
their imperfect contacts might be broken and they would 
all be drifting, far apart, solitary—as she was. 

Was perfect union, then, impossible? Was there for 
every human being some point of existence to be reached 
when they would discover that no one could accompany 
them, that no one even could distinguish the track they 
must follow; some moment of realized aloneness and remote¬ 
ness? 


INSIGHTS 


119 

Then she thought of her mother and father. She was 
happy again. 

But still she was not touching Hilda. She increased her 
dialogues with Hilda, she beamed on her, she sometimes 
strolled arm-in-arm; but her heart, her mind, stood cold, 
firm in isolation. 


CHAPTER II 





TENSION 

i 

On the fifth day Marie arranged a bridge party. Jimmy 
and Hob came after tea, for tennis; Mrs. Everett, Tommy 
Lucas, and one or two others were to join them after dinner. 

Dido and Hilda were indoors when Marie and her com¬ 
panions came off the verandah and walked towards the 
shade of the pergola, but they were getting books together 
to take into the garden, and when the other group reached 
the end of the pergola the cousins were seated on the lawn. 

Marie glanced at them. Involuntarily she paused. In 
front of her were Hob and her mother. Jimmy was beside 
her; in the rear, carrying a basket of stockings to be darned, 
and having an air of deliberate detachment, was Miss Ham¬ 
mond. 

Marie quickly moved forward. Standing before Hob she 
arrested his progress. 

“A suggestion!” she cried. “I don’t feel like tennis. I’ll 
take you men up Hirst Hill and introduce you to some pro¬ 
teges of mine. It’s an old couple living in a tiny hut just 
at the foot of the hill—on the Hirstwood side. They’re 
perfectly charming. Dickens might have drawn them. 
They’re absolutely prehistoric—neither of them can read nor 


120 


TENSION 


121 


write, but the old man has a repertoire of folk-songs, and 
he can be prevailed upon to sing them. I can make him, 
anyhow.” She linked her hands, laughing over their pale 
bridge at Hob. “I imagine I’m about the only person who 
can stimulate him to any exhibition of life at all. He exists 
usually in a state of—what’s the word . . She merrily 
frowned. “Oh! What is it?” 

“Coma?” Hob offered her. 

“That’s it. But he becomes absolutely flirtatious with 
me and sings me anything. Do you know ‘My Son Henery 
—Henery my Son?’ ” 

“I never zeed the zame, ma’am,” Hob replied. 

“Oh, it’s lovely! You shall hear it to-night. It will be 
far more fun than tennis.” 

Hob assumed an air of coyness. “Not for me. I’m so 
shy.” 

“Nonsense.” Marie still smiled, but her hands became 
still, her eyes fixed. She waited for his next remark. 

Dido’s glance rose from a book and came, penetrating, 
veiled, to them all. She saw Marie’s back and quiet head, 
Hob, smiling at Marie and yet somehow looking implacable, 
Jimmy, Mrs. Jesson, Miss Hammond, all motionless, all 
watching Marie. 

She dropped her eyes. She listened to Hob’s words. 

“It’s too much of an ordeal. The real, original folk-songs 
rendered by the real, original old folks at home—it’s too 
good for the likes of me. No.” He shook his head. “I 
won’t,” he cried, flouncing his shoulders. “I won’t.” 

Marie did not laugh. Her lips had set; they looked flat 
and withered between her swollen cheeks. She stared at 


122 SECRET DRAMA 

Hob, her eyes hard and polished like stones. For an instant 
she did not speak. 

Dido was suddenly amazed to find her hands trembling 
on her book. She gazed at them. As if they expressed 
some agitating fact, her heart began to beat, her breath to 
come quickly. Good gracious, what did this excitement 
mean? 

The silence was profound, but it was not the silence of 
repose, nor dream; it was portentous; she had no vision of 
inertia; it was swift, culminating movement which she visual¬ 
ized; she waited for the crash of an impact. 

Her gaze was dragged from her book again. Mrs. Jes- 
son’s hands sprawling against a dark dress, twitching, sug¬ 
gesting power and the ability to do violence; Mrs. Jesson’s 
dilating nostrils, her eyes glassily dark, and locked to Marie’s 
face; by her, looking from her to Marie, Miss Hammond 
resting the work-basket on the ridge of her high, bulging 
stomach, the stir of her eyes like the flutter of a caged thing 
round the confines of its prison, her expression oddly one of 
profounder intelligence as though she regarded the scene 
from some point nearer to absolute truth than theirs, Jimmy, 
staring at Marie, his mouth compressed, his air that of a 
man facing with philosophical phlegm a demonstration of 
our essential impotence, Hob, extremely easy and firm, with 
the ease allowed by a lapse of perceptiveness, the firmness 
of callous and selfish youth—every detail was observed by 
Dido. 

She lowered her eyes. How supreme was that feeling of 
movement! Oh, she was speeding down to them through 
those abysses of solitude; they, set like a group of statuary 


TENSION 


123 


in the colorless, diffused light of a low, a cloudy, sky, 
wheeled round each other, some converging, some threaten¬ 
ing a complete disintegration of relationship. But pre¬ 
dominant was the feeling of a general convergence to some 
point. They were all in it —that was the feeling. In what? 
Why, in the atmosphere of sympathy or hostility raised by 
Marie. She, Dido, was in it now. Oh, she dropped into it 
—plumb! It swirled in waves about her ears. 

And now, this intense moment past, Marie was speaking. 

Marie’s voice was level, it suggested irritation but not 
defeat. It still had the coolness of an imperturbable self- 
confidence. 

“How absurd!” Marie said. “They won’t take any notice 
of you. They’ll merely sing to please me, and you’ll have 
the benefit of my tact and attractions!” She burst out 
laughing. Her glance grew good-natured again. Contem¬ 
plating her own conception of herself, she again seemed 
convinced of ultimate harmony and success. 

Hob shook his head. “I dursen’t,” he said. “I dursen’t.” 

He smiled at them all. Stepping out of the group, he 
crossed the lawn to Dido and Hilda. They glanced up, smil¬ 
ing at him, Hilda conscious and almost laughing, Dido with 
a look of inflexible reserve. 

He fixed his fair, intelligent eyes on Dido. He continued 
to smile. “May I suggest myself for your partner?” he 
said. “You haven’t, by any chance, made up your mind to 
finish that book, I hope? You will play?” 

Dido had a moment of what seemed like a complete sus¬ 
pension of life. She seemed to hang, passive, fatalistic, in a 
kind of intermediate realm between one existence and an- 


124 


SECRET DRAMA 


other; she.felt herself move there and hang, with the sense 
of a discarded existence drifting round her like a corpse, and 
another, brilliant and beautiful, waiting, like a garment, to 
be assumed. 

The next moment she was established, firm, faintly gasp¬ 
ing, in that new, that incredible, existence. She looked— 
nay, she had not ceased to look at Hob!—but she looked 
now at him as if for the first time his reality was manifested 
to her. Beautifully she touched him. How close they were. 
Sitting there under his soft intimate gaze she felt herself 
meeting him. 

These impressions became reduced to words. 

“It isn’t Hilda. It’s me.” 

She hadn’t a doubt. It wasn’t a delusion of vanity, nor 
an assumption of avid sentimentality; it was clairvoyance. 
She knew. 

Very happily she laughed. “Yes, I’ll play.” She stood 
up. She looked at his eyes with a fresh but discreet glance. 
“I’m always willing to play. Haven’t you discovered it’s a 
craze with me?” 

“Oh, there are a great many things I haven’t discovered 
about you,” he said. “You aren’t obvious. You’re very— 
very”—he paused with an air of chagrin—“very obscure. 
Horrid.” 

She laughed. “How interesting that must make me!” 

“Aggravating,” he corrected. “It’s disgusting. I don’t 
like it. I don’t think you’re a nice person for me to know.” 

Dido laughed again, she made a quick little movement 
with her shoulders, as she opened her mouth to speak, but 
higher, longer, than her own laughter, came Hilda’s. 


TENSION 


125 

Dido was checked. Hilda. Marie. All of them. But 
first, Hilda. 

She turned breathlessly to Hilda. 

Smoothly Hilda’s glance came to her. Widely with her 
cloudless young eyes she conveyed the extent of her amuse¬ 
ment. She hadn’t seen anything. For an instant Dido 
wondered over Hilda’s perhaps enviable imperceptiveness. 
Then she looked at the others. 

She looked at them across Hob’s shoulders, having an 
underlying sense of his long, equal figure intervened between 
her and them. She met the scrutiny of their eyes. 

Miss Hammond’s pale stare, Mrs. Jesson’s, grim, intrepid, 
Jimmy’s quite blank, Marie’s. 

Marie and Dido looked at each other. 

In Marie’s gaze there was no emotion, no shadow. It lay 
dreamily on Dido; she seemed to look through Dido, beyond 
her; in her attitude there was a fine grace and strength, an 
equanimity crushing in its effect. Dido admired her. 

“Oh, she can act,” Dido thought, kindling with apprecia¬ 
tion. “But I’m awfully sorry for Mrs. Jesson.” 

Marie moved her gaze away; she bent her broad head a 
little, she smiled. This movement, this smile, disfigured her. 
She looked old and insolent. Deliberately she intimated 
her enjoyment over the aspect of the scene as she saw it, 
and she subtly evoked for them all an aspect which was 
ugly, which was gross. 

Dido grew crimson. She could not conceal her anger 
with Marie for the cynical suggestiveness of that smile. 
Jimmy walked away towards Miss Wilson, who had come 
up with a basket and who was picking beans for dinner. 


126 SECRET DRAMA 

He addressed her, staring at the beans. “You’re busy. 
Are they good?” 

“Yes, yes—I think they are—very good.” 

“Hmm. That’s right. Very good things—beans.” 

Jimmy was uneasy. He turned and glanced at Marie; his 
little black eyes seemed to stand rigidly in his broad face, 
his brows seemed fairly to repudiate either responsibility or 
criticism. 

Through silence, through the pure, thin, and pervasive 
light, Marie walked towards him. 

“Help me tighten the net, Jimmy,” she said. 

“Delighted—delighted. I warn you—I’m in fine form 
to-night. The Old Man’s Youth by William de Morgan. 
Miss Nicholls, I charge half a crown for the grand-stand. 
It’s worth it. You are going to witness the resurrection of 
my early vigor. Oyes—Oyes—Oyes.” 

Jimmy splendidly helped them all. Marie laughed; Mrs. 
Jesson, with a vague look, took a few steps towards the path; 
Hob spun round to Hilda, who was still smiling in wonder¬ 
ful ignorance. 

“These premature crowings—rotten, aren’t they?” he said. 
He returned to Dido, he pressed her with his roguish gaze. 
His eyes warmed. 

She couldn’t mistake it. She had a feeling of him as being 
almost frostily governed by reason and principle in his gen¬ 
eral relationships; she remembered her past impressions of 
his distance and keenness, his look of a healthy cool tem¬ 
perature, and this new, fervid glance made her want to close 
her eyes. 

She stepped away from him with a short little laugh. She 


TENSION 


127 


went down the garden, obeying some unconscious knowl¬ 
edge that she must change her shoes. She saw the grass, 
beamlessly producing an effect of light, the house very sharp- 
cut, and as if projected out of an even width of smoke, so 
dark and soft the sky hung behind it, but consciously she 
was not aware of them. Her mental gaze was fixed on Hilda, 
on Mrs. Jesson, on Marie, and, transiently, on Miss Ham¬ 
mond. She was very much involved with them all. She 
couldn’t think how, at present. It was quite impossible to 
think at all about anything. But they surrounded her, held 
her, asked unfathomable things of her. She had a tremen¬ 
dous sense of the exigencies of her position. 

Then the event no longer had an almost august appear¬ 
ance. Why in the world did she feel so excited? Merely 
because Mr. Ramsay had spoken to her, had looked at her, 
instead of devoting himself to Hilda. 

“But he hasn’t devoted himself to Hilda. He was simply 
nicer to her than he was to me. Really we had no justifica¬ 
tion for thinking him in love with her. Oh, I do hope she 
doesn’t think he is. I’m not in love with him. But I like 
him. If he does decide that he likes me sufficiently to . . . 
I think I could like him well enough . . . But does Hilda 
think he meant anything?” 

In the hall she met Miss Wilson and Miss Hyde. They 
had just come in through the porch, Miss Hyde from the 
village, Miss Wilson from the garden. 

Miss Wilson was laughing. Oh, that feeling of detach¬ 
ment was vanquished now! Dido smiled at the two women. 
She was glad they were there. As they stood close to her 
in the hall so they stood on the circle of her orbit, shelter- 


128 


SECRET DRAMA 


ing her from the chill infinity beyond. Never to be pressed 
beyond that ring of sympathetic and kindly people: she de¬ 
sired this. 

They were smiling at her, but—how queer they looked! 

Color stood in patches over Miss Wilson's slightly sunken 
and tragic cheeks; her eyes were bright, even wild; their 
soft stir, and the stir of her lips and of her hands, combined 
with the tremor of the weak frillings round her rather aged 
body, suggested an agitation deep but exquisite. Incredul¬ 
ity was in her girlish stare but a delicate complacency in the 
pose of her head. She exhibited to Dido the wonder and 
beauty of her own existence. Dido’s existence! Miss Wil¬ 
son realized that only as she divined its power to perceive 
and be impressed by her own reality. Dido, all of them, 
were the shadowy, similar, interested figures which circled 
Miss Wilson’s sphere. Actually, people were real and es¬ 
sential only to themselves. To others they were featureless 
members of that surrounding ring. 

Dear, how mysterious and impressive Miss Hyde looked! 
What was the matter with her? She was silent, an unique 
fact. She gazed at Miss Wilson and then away, faintly 
shaking her head as if to free it from some consequence of 
an invisible and imponderable sort, moving her mouth, and 
involuntarily tightening on her basket her flat, blue-gloved 
hands. Her eyes, into whose brightness had come a darker 
and more liquid quality, gazed sadly; she had the look of 
one shifted suddenly from the warm comforting light of il¬ 
lusion into the untender dullness of reality. 

No one spoke. Dido went upstairs, the others to the 
kitchen. 


TENSION 


129 


The bedroom lay like a gray pool, empty and smooth, 
before Dido. Hilda’s bed. Hilda’s chair. 

Dido stopped. 

“Oh dear, oh dear,” she said audibly. 

She was frightened by the room. It was tenacious; the 
things in it gave her a masterful stare. More than any 
other room it commanded her; she couldn’t discard it; she 
must always come to it at last and be profoundly involved 
in its peculiar emotional dream-laden atmosphere—the at¬ 
mosphere Hilda had created. 

Guiltily and quietly she advanced into it, keeping her eyes 
on the tennis shoes, set side by side under her bed. 

ii 

While they played tennis Mrs. Jesson watered the garden, 
cut off dead flowers, repeated the instructions she had al¬ 
ready given Miss Wilson about the dinner and about the 
refreshments to be offered to the bridge-players, wandered 
through the rooms staring vacantly round them, stood with¬ 
out movement, staring at nothing. 

And with every action, every pause, her unhappiness grew. 
She could not think; there was a great inquietude in her 
head; names, faces, revolved there but never achieved co¬ 
herence; she felt as if she were stumbling through endless 
vistas of darkness. She was alone in them. She forgot 
that she had ever had times of companionship. Incalculable 
periods of solitude seemed to reach away behind her, seemed 
to be before her. There burned in her a dull resentment. 
She endured a feeling of having lived always unrecognized; 


130 


SECRET DRAMA 


no one, not even Henry, had ever reached her. Through 
spaces of her existence they had passed, but always there 
had been an undivined realm where the very essence of her 
nature dwelt alone, made, through isolation, ineffective. 

There was no hand she could grasp now, no stable thing 
she could rest on, no star she could move by. 

This phase passed. She became able to think; she sat on 
the verandah in long, silent communion with herself. 

Mr. Ramsay did not want Marie. He wanted Dido. 

Either Marie had made a mistake, and he had never been 
as passionate as she imagined, or else he with the first sight 
of Dido had discovered that Marie was too old for him, 
that his infatuation was purely sensuous. 

But it was Dido he admired. lie had shown Marie that. 
Marie knew it. He was lost; Marie wouldn’t marry him. 

“I want her to marry so. I like him. I was so glad to 
think she was going to marry him. She never said she loved 
him, but it isn’t her way; she isn’t demonstrative. I’m sure 
—she must love him—though she don’t show it. She’s 
hurt, she’s suffering. I know she is. And he—deliberately 
—refused her so that he could stay with that girl.” 

She passed her tongue over her teeth. Her doubled hands 
pressed hardly on her knees. She stared at Dido, seeing 
Dido’s tall, white-clad figure as something inhuman, swift, 
victorious, free, darting about the lawn like a flame, white 
and consuming. 

“I knew it. I saw it coming. I feared it from the first. 
He looked at her when he thought she wouldn’t notice. He 
can’t have loved Marie. It was only a young man’s infatua¬ 
tion. . . . And I can’t do anything. I’m her mother; I 


TENSION 


131 

love her; I want to shield her from everything; and I can’t 
do anything. I must sit by and see her suffer. . . . O God, 
tell me what to do to help her. . . . Don’t let her keep 
away from me. She’s so hard. She never thinks of what I 
feel, of all I fear. If she told me. But my love isn’t suffi¬ 
cient. She don’t want anything I can give her,” 

A long experience of darkness, of fixed staring at the in¬ 
exorable truth, and then the slow return to percipience, the 
recognition of Dido’s figure set there, immutable, dreadful, 
in the equal light. 

“If he’d never seen Miss Baird he’d have had Marie. 
Coming round here every day he couldn’t have helped lov¬ 
ing her. He’d have asked her to marry him. Now he 
won’t. He made it quite plain.” 

She heard a sound behind her, but it was meaningless 
and remote; she did not turn. When Miss Hammond 
passed her and then stopped and gazed, a cup and saucer 
and a plate in either hand, a blue steam from the cup rising 
to her circular, damp face, she stared at Miss Hammond 
without sight, her look unconsciously black. 

“I thought I’d bring my supper out here,” Miss Ham¬ 
mond said, still gazing, her lids without a quiver, her eyes, 
white, still, like the eyes of an image. “It’s so hot indoors.” 

Mrs. Jesson rubbed her upper lip roughly. “Have you 
got all you want, Bessie?” She stared at the cup of cocoa, 
and at the high pile of bread-and-butter. 

“Yes, thank you. Shall I be in the way here?” 

“No; sit here.” 

Miss Hammond sat down, a piece of crockery on either 
knee. 


132 


SECRET DRAMA 


“Does your head ache?” she asked. 

“No. Why? What made you think it did, Bessie?” 

“I thought you looked tired, that’s all. And you are 
sitting down. You’re generally so busy. So nice to be 
busy. Always looking after people.” 

“That’s a woman’s life, Bessie, looking after people. Or 
it’s a mother’s. ... I am tired. Tired and afraid.” 

Up and down her thick knees traveled her thick, rosy 
hands. She gazed at Brend Hill brimming up to the con¬ 
fused sky, thrusting its bald brow out above the livid roads 
and ponds, and the desire for self-expression became in¬ 
tense. Inchoate impressions of distance, space, austerity, of 
a beauty too wild and infinite to have relevance, of the 
nearness and similitude of Bessie’s figure, came to her. 
Words babbled in her mind, words which should make for 
ever brilliant and ineffaceable the fact of her existence, all 
its complexity, depth, happiness, and despair. 

Then Bessie spoke. “What are you afraid of?” 

Bessie had become quite motionless. She held her cup 
half-way to her mouth. She had bent back her head, and 
the little round straw hat she wore, sunk to her shoulders, 
ringed like a rather tight halo the arched disk of her face. 

Mrs. Jesson thought: “That was a silly thing to say. 
Now I’ve frightened Bessie.” Aloud she replied in a strong 
voice: “Nothing, Bessie dear. Now don’t get any fancies 
into your head that I meant anything. I only meant that 
it had come over me that I couldn’t expect to get through 
life without trouble—disappointment, and loneliness. I 
didn’t mean anything else. Now don’t get thinking I did or 


TENSION 


133 


I shall be afraid to say anything to you. There, I said 
afraid then. It’s a figure of speech, you see.” 

Miss Hammond lowered the cup to its saucer. She faintly 
smiled. “Very well, I won’t. Don’t worry. I’m sure no 
trouble will come to you. So good and kind. Anything 
we can do to help you? Such a lot you’ve done for me. 
Can’t I do anything . . . ?” 

Buried now as an impossibility, even as a fault, was that 
longing to speak, to confide. Mrs. Jesson saw only with 
any clearness the pathetic reality of this old woman, strove 
only to perceive and allay all the phantoms in whose com¬ 
pany Miss Hammond daily lived. “All you can do is to be 
quite happy, Bessie, and know you’re quite safe, and that 
we love you. That’s all we want you to do.” 

“So kind of you. I’m so grateful. I can’t say—how 
much.” Miss Hammond smiled. Her eyes moved round 
to the tennis-players, stealthily and cautiously. Then she 
fixed them on space. She began to eat the bread-and- 
butter. 

Mrs. Jesson did not speak again. She sat, watching the 
tennis, until presently the gong for dinner sounded. Then 
she went indoors, leaving Miss Hammond still eating with 
appetite, sitting bundled up in the chair, her broad feet 
turned to each other, her round-eyed gaze on her plate, her 
appearance, her attitude, contemplative and impassive like 
an image of Buddha. 

Dinner allowed but little time for thought. Mrs. Jesson 
had to join in the conversation. She was almost terrified by 
the harsh, warning stare Marie had given her when she 


SECRET DRAMA 


134 

entered the room in front of the men. Mrs. Jesson under¬ 
stood. “Dare to humiliate me by betraying your chagrin 
and I’ll . . .” That was what Marie darted at her mother. 
Mrs. Jesson preserved a frozen control over herself all 
through the meal. She smiled at Hob, she spoke to him, in 
her silences she stared at the things on the table; they were 
weights which retained her in this world of the instant. But 
when at last every one went on to the verandah, the house¬ 
maid taking the tea there, for it was hot and airless in the 
room, she received no smile of thanks from Marie. Marie, 
talking, laughing, moving her hands, passed without a 
glance, without, obviously, any sense of the presence of a 
helper. 

Mrs. Jesson looked after her. She made no attempt to 
follow. 

“You’re coming, Mrs. Jesson?” Hob called. 

“Yes.” Mrs. Jesson strode towards him, powerful, virile, 
with an indomitable and artless face. She came close to 
him and the chair he was arranging for her. She looked at 
his face, wanly narrow in the dusk, and her own did not re¬ 
flect the desire, the pain, the unscrupulous seduction of her 
heart. She appeared aggressive, keen. She seemed, in de¬ 
fiance of all the social conventions, to menace him with a 
concentrated anger, to exhibit to him the sorrow he had 
imposed on her. 

And all the time she was feeling how she liked him, she 
was endeavoring to dominate him. She hadn’t, at that mo¬ 
ment, any religion, no sense of law, nor responsibility. She 
felt unrestrained, subject to nothing but the elemental and 
passionate dictates of her own heart. 


TENSION 


i35 


“Mother!” Marie rang out the word. “Here’s your tea. 
Do make her sit down, Hob.” 

Mrs. Jesson’s disquieted eyes rolled round. She received 
Marie’s savage look. She sat down and made little ridges 
in her skirt and rubbed them between finger and thumb. 
When Hob brought her tea she was able to smile and say: 

“I believe we’re going to have a storm. It’s very hot.” 

And rapping, rapping in her head with a kind of insistent 
ferocity were the words: “How hard she is! How hard she 
is!” 

Soon afterwards Mrs. Everett and Tommy Lucas came. 
They all went into the drawing-room. 

Mrs. Jesson did not play. She sat on the chesterfield and 
mended a pair of Marie’s silk stockings. For a little while 
Mrs. Everett sat with her. 

She listened to Mrs. Everett, her eyes fixed on her needle, 
and presently out of the words which fell on her ears, there 
shaped gradually for her the vision of a spirit facing the 
problems she faced, moving in the same spheres, finite, per¬ 
plexed, weak. Again there surged in her the desire to make 
articulate her feelings; it was as if she hoped by expressing 
them to render them imperishable, to establish an immortal 
record of her existence whose mortality was so sure a thing. 

She did not thus analyze her need, but she was conscious 
that some power impelled her spiritually towards Mrs. 
Everett. Her hands lay quiet on the stockings, her eyes 
came to Mrs. Everett’s face with a piercing fixed stare. 

No. She couldn’t tell this woman anything. Mrs. Eve¬ 
rett believed in spiritualism. She was a mother, and she 
had lost her son in the war, but, gazing at her, Mrs. Jesson 


136 


SECRET DRAMA 


no longer had that feeling of identity. The certitude of her 
irremediable loneliness crushed her. This woman said she 
communicated with her dead son. Mrs. Jesson could have 
laughed. Communicate with the dead! How unimportant 
a victory that seemed, even if true—and she believed it was 
only morbidity of the imagination. Mrs. Everett was all 
nerves. To be able to communicate with the living; for 
there to be no regions impenetrable to love or loneliness— 
that was the supreme thing, the withheld thing. 

She was alone. There was no one within reach. She had 
a sudden despairing wonder—did Henry see? 

She looked back at the stocking. That silk wasn’t really 
a good match. Marie wouldn’t think she had done it very 
neatly. That other pair—the mole ones—she hadn’t satis¬ 
fied Marie with them. 

She began on the second stocking, very carefully, but 
without hope. 

The contrast between her present state and those happy 
forecasts of her life here with Marie became visible to 
her. 

“I hoped nothing would come between us. . . . If he 
hadn’t seen Miss Baird. . . . They needn’t have stopped 
here. I could have refused when Mr. Baird asked. If 
Marie had told me any one was beginning to love her, I 
might have thought. . . . Young men are so unstable.” 

Mentally she saw Dido. She raised her eyes and stared 
at the black window space and the unstarred and hollow 
blackness beyond, and between the night and the trembling 
golden light of the room Dido’s figure moved, heartless, 
strange, intrusive. 


TENSION 


137 


Stony immobility fell on her. She hated that girl. Rea¬ 
lization of her own age, her dignity as wife and mother, her 
peculiar intimacies with pain and delight and sacrifice gave 
her a sense of awfulness; she sat like the victim of an im¬ 
pious act; she hated Dido for a triumph unmerited and un¬ 
sought. 


CHAPTER III 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 

i 

There were showers in the night, and a hot, humid morn¬ 
ing followed. A black, uprearing shape of cloud formed in 
the distances above the sea, and rising tilted over the dun 
inland fields. The North Downs were smoking with fogs, 
and a thick brown vapor smeared the horizons. 

A metallic light burnt upon the Green; the pond was 
rusted; silence fell. 

In the house it was very hot, very dim. There was a 
singular noiselessness in all the rooms. Several times Mrs. 
Jesson looked round with a vague sense of difference. No 
one was walking, they were all stealing about. They did 
not speak, they glanced mysteriously. Gently they shifted 
furniture and crockery. They appeared without having 
given sign of their approach. As imperceptibly they re¬ 
tired. 

She became a little irritated. There grew in her the feel¬ 
ing of a deep and significant restlessness. There was some¬ 
thing abnormal in these movements which superficially 
seemed no more than the daily ritual of house-duties. They 
disturbed her. Bessie continually passed in and out with her 
subdued shuffle, getting china without the chink of contact, 

138 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 


139 


hovering round the gas-stove and not speaking as if the 
presence of death were in the house. Miss Wilson, looking 
with her sunken loops of brown hair and her brown dress, 
curiously soft and dim like a moth, flitted out of sight and 
into it, eyes lowered, a crimson color in her cheeks. The 
scullery door became a firmament into which Miss Hyde, all 
gleaming and hushed, broke vividly, and then disappeared 
like an erratic planet. Why on earth did the woman gaze 
so eagerly at Miss Wilson? 

And outside, the sickly day hung without movement, 
thick, smelling of rotting leaves, of damp blackberries, of 
pools stagnant in ditches. No leaf stirred. The greenish 
and impure light rested on the ground as if the stare of the 
darkening sky was on it with a mortal pressure. The cows 
had withdrawn to the trees beyond the main road and stood 
there against the wet faint hedge. Two horses and their 
colt moved soundlessly round the pond under the silvery 
wHd burning of the willows expanded like weak flames upon 
a somber east. The quietude had no end, no flaw. It was 
in the house, it stretched beyond the house, formless, im¬ 
perative, brooding. The human stir was like the rustle of 
leaves, as light, as futile. Gestures of people crossing the 
Green were signals, incomprehensible, and of no avail. 

Her head ached. 

Towards the end of the morning sudden cracks of sound 
broke violently upon the house; Marie, who had not gone 
to bed till three, was now up and moving about. Doors 
banged. Clear “Damns” were audible. 

Downstairs they started at these noises. They looked at 
each other. Without stirring from where they stood they 


140 


SECRET DRAMA 


seemed to draw together, to be huddled, timid and appre¬ 
hensive, in logical expectation of the storm. 

They said, once or twice, that a storm was coming; they 
spoke composedly as if as human beings, the supreme 
achievements of the Creator, they knew themselves immune 
from all devastating forces; but the tiny whites of their 
eyes moved nervously towards the window, towards the 
humped hills, shaggy with fog. 

n 

Marie went out before lunch and did not return for the 
meal. Mrs. Jesson waited some time, and then in a loud 
voice told Miss Wilson to bring in the soup. She sat down 
at the head of the table with Bessie on her left. She ate 
little, but she watched over Bessie’s needs with a stern and 
unsmiling care. 

Miss Hammond’s voice weakened with every response to 
inquiry. She obviously tried to make no noise with her 
knife and fork; she kept her eyes lowered, but several times 
they moved under their lids in Mrs. Jesson’s direction. 

Coffee was taken in the same silence and stillness; both 
women had a listening air. 

Then Mrs. Jesson put down her empty cup. She stood 
up. 

“I hope Marie comes back before the storm breaks,” she 
said. 

Her tone was loud and harsh, and Miss Hammond’s fat 
body jerked. She had been drinking enjoyably, but she 
lowered her cup at once, subduing her look of pleasure. 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 


141 

“I hope so. I dare say she will. I shouldn’t worry if I 
were you.” 

Mrs. Jesson didn’t answer. She gazed at Bessie. Not 
worry! As if that were possible. Why did people say 
such senseless things? 

She turned and went out of the room. 

In the dark passage she paused again. She did not know 
why, save for a dim notion that there was something she 
ought to do or say, that something was being asked of her, 
and she had a moment of listening. 

In it her brain grew blank. She presently gazed round 
her with a look of wonder, perplexed by her stationary posi¬ 
tion there. 

She crossed the hall and went up the staircase. 

When she reached the landing she again stopped, her eyes 
on Dido’s door. 

There was no definite thought in her head, but her hands 
began to stir and her mouth to twist and protrude. She felt 
ferocious, impatient; there were cries in her heart, strug¬ 
gles, destructive actions. 

Her sense of having assailed something with voice and 
hand was so strong that she stared, dully surprised to see 
the passage free from wreckage, orderly and unchanged. 
She went on at once and into her bedroom. 

Her head throbbed violently. She lay down on the bed 
and closed her eyes. Her face screwed up into an expres¬ 
sion of deep pain. Through her eyelids she saw Marie’s 
face and beautiful body. She felt that she had no hold on 
that body; she lay under Marie’s steady, bright gaze as 
under an iron weight. 


142 


SECRET DRAMA 


A long time passed. She had dozed lightly, with a dis¬ 
tressing consciousness of a skirt Marie had given her to 
alter, of Bessie’s afternoon cup of tea, of open windows 
which ought to be closed before the storm broke. The uni¬ 
verse began and ended with the house. Beyond there was 
nothingness, at the heart of which brooded an inscrutable 
purpose. 

She was aroused by a burst of sound immediately at 
her ear. She sprang into a sitting position with a wild 
look, with her mouth open though she emitted no sound. 
She saw Marie standing against the closed door. 

The darkness of semi-unconsciousness cleared from her 
eyes. She trembled very much. 

‘‘Marie, you did frighten me. I think you might be 
quieter.” She sat upright, physically intimidating. 

Marie did not look at her. Standing before the mirror 
Marie regarded herself with a black intentness. 

“I didn’t know you were in here.” She turned and walked 
to the long wardrobe mirror and gazed into it. 

She had on a pale-lemon dress and a large hat. Her back, 
given now to Mrs. Jesson, looked young and pliant, but 
her legs were a little thick. 

With the imperious decision which had marked all her 
movements since she entered, she now faced her mother. 
Her cheeks were fat and dark in the shadow cast by her hat, 
her lips scarcely showed; the pouches under her eyes were 
pale, they made her face appear dull and weary. 

She burst out laughing and tossed a pair of gloves on to 
the dressing-table. 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 


i43 

“Well, I thought I knew women/’ she exclaimed, gazing 
in front of her, “and their predatory powers—I’ve seen a 
good many hunts, hut I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a 
cruder one than this. It’s too lovely! Miss Baird’s opinion 
of our obtuseness must be extraordinary. Or does she de¬ 
spise opinion? I thought that women generally camou¬ 
flaged their intentions a little, anyhow. This is really too 
good .’ 5 

Still laughing, she pulled out her hatpins and slapped the 
hat down on top of the gloves. 

Mrs. Jesson looked at her, but did not speak. She was 
still trembling and she moistened her lips. She must be 
ready; something was coming. She had a dim sense of 
crisis. 

Marie seated herself at the dressing-table and took down 
her hair, dragging it, throwing the hairpins down, not 
quickly, but with a kind of deliberate ferocity. Looking 
straight at her masterful reflection she went on: 

“I met Mrs. Randall and went back with her to lunch. 
I come home and meet Hobbie,” she burst into loud laugh¬ 
ter—“poor devil! I wish May had been with me to see 
him. After this, I abandon my sex. Oh!” She waved her 
hands with a spacious gesture. “I’ve always been a femin¬ 
ist, but after this piece of blatant man-hunting—any man 
can damn women in my presence and I’ll applaud him.” 
She clasped her hands under her chin, and, throwing back 
her head, laughed with still greater noise, her eyes a fierce 
glint amid a damp tangle of hair. She had a wild and rough 
appearance like that of an animal. 


144 


SECRET DRAMA 


“What was he doing, Marie?” Mrs. Jesson asked, speak¬ 
ing huskily. She lowered her legs to the floor. She felt 
the perfection, the singularity, of her possession of this 
woman. None shared it. Her privileges, her powers, her 
duties, were unique. Marie suffered. She, alone, could 
grasp Marie, defend, solace, eternally labor for her. 

“Doing!” Marie brought her linked hands down on the 
dressing-table with a loud thump. “Poor wretch. He was 
submitting. It was pathetic. Miss Baird was displaying 
her most innocent and virginal airs, Miss Wilson was gazing 
as she does gaze, enthralled —a romance of real life—and 
Miss Nicholls looked too prim and blushing for words. 
How is it that these awfully good and Mid-Victorian people 
always see the sensuous part of anything when an ungodly 
demoralized person like myself does not? Very funny. It 
was a delightful scene. I must write and tell May. Poor 
Hobbie! She’ll mourn over him! And such fearfully crude 
tactics. Oh, it’s a tragedy. It is; it is. I could weep for 
him.” 

She became silent; her hair had rolled over her shoulders 
and down her cheeks, only her nose and her prominent 
brow were visible, her head was sunken on her chest; she 
looked abandoned. 

Mrs. Jesson’s throat was dry, her red nostrils were dis¬ 
tended, her face, reddened by heat and slumber, and lined 
with emotion, stood out of the haggard and evil daylight 
with the greatness, the terribleness, of one mastered by a 
passion, made by it tyrannical, conducted by it to sacrifice, 
to evil, to heroism, to despair. She got off the bed. 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 


H5 


“Marie,” she began, remaining on the rug by the bed. 

Marie turned, without a smile, without expression of any 
kind. Gazing at that heavy and lifeless face, Mrs. Jesson 
did not for the moment go on. She moved her eyes away 
to the window. 

In the room it was very dark. Outside the light was on 
the fields, creeping there lividly. People had come to their 
gates; she could see them staring at the running clouds 
which stormed up from the south; she listened to the light 
drift of their voices. 

She did not understand why, but the sight of those meager 
narrow bodies inspired her. They extended for ever, those 
groups of human figures, so inexpressive of the immense 
dramas they by their contacts created. Mothers and chil¬ 
dren. She felt omnipotent, supreme, sublimely gifted. 
Marie, having a mother, had everything. 

She moved off the rug. “Marie darling, did you care for 
him very much?” 

Marie threw her hair back from her face. “I don’t under¬ 
stand you. Care? For him? What in the world are you 
talking about?” Her brows were crooked with displeased 
amazement. 

Mrs. Jesson’s eyes shone compassionately on her. “I 
know you don’t like to admit it, Marie; you’re so proud, but 
I’m your mother. Anything you say is safe with me. Don’t 
keep me outside your trouble. Eve—suffered so—knowing 
how you must be suffering. Darling . . .” 

Marie sprang up and beyond the reach of her mother’s 
advancing hands. “Suffering!” she cried. “Who on earth 


SECRET DRAMA 


146 

spoke of suffering? You really are a fool, mother.” She 
laughed angrily. “I’m sorry to have to be so rude, but 
there’s no other word for you.” 

Mrs. Jesson laid a shaking hand on the back of the chair 
Marie had &eft. “No, Marie, a mother. I’m a mother. 
Perhaps a mother’s love is folly. . . . Don’t put me off 
like this. I want to help you. . . .” 

“But I don’t want help. You’re mad; you’re mad. Be 
a mother, my dear good woman,” she laughed. “But be 
intelligent as well, I implore you. 

“Marie, if you knew how you hurt me, you wouldn’t 
speak to me like this.” 

Marie made a movement of uncontrollable irritation. 
“Well, you’re so exasperating. I wish you wouldn’t try and 
interpret me. You’re never right. I know you love me— 
and I love you—but you know I hate talking sloppily. The 
best way of showing love in my opinion isn’t to be con¬ 
tinually tormenting a person with professions of worship, 
and estimates of character which are invariably wrong, but 
to try and understand them and give them what they want, 
not what you want.” 

Marie looked at her fingers, speaking to them fluently, 
forcibly. “Your idea of 'love is a perpetual exchange of 
kisses and hugs and endless confidences—what you feel 
when you say good-by and what I feel when you aren’t 
with me, and you call that helping me and sacrificing your¬ 
self. I don’t see it. I call it a form of self-gratification. 
You do it because it pleases you. You give up things for 
me and worry over me merely because you wouldn’t be 
happy if you didn’t. I don’t see any virtue in it. What 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 


147 

I want and what I should be grateful for is to be left 
alone, and that's what you won’t do—merely because it 
would hurt you to do it. But that would be what I should 
call real sacrifice and love. Doing something that’s painful, 
not what’s pleasant.” 

There was no movement, no word, from Mrs. Jesson. 
She stood frozenly staring at Marie. She held on to the 
chair as if that alone kept her upright. Her lips parted in 
the stress of her pain. She moved her eyes from Marie and 
incredulously looked round the room. Not shattered—un¬ 
changed. She, too, survived. Yet this was what Marie 
thought of her. Marie. And she had been about to clasp 
Marie, holding her for ever. 

She cleared her throat. “Marie dear . . .” 

Marie let her hands fall to her side. She looked at her 
mother. 

“There, don’t grizzle,” she said; “I know you mean well, 
bless you. Only do understand that you’re not to jump to 
conclusions.” 

She moved firmly to the window and closed it. “There’ll 
be a deluge in a minute.” 

Quickly Mrs. Jesson went to her. “You don’t know how 
you pain me, Marie. Sometimes I think you don’t care. 
. . . But that don’t matter. I don’t want to talk about my¬ 
self. I want to know how you feel—whether you love this 
man. If you’d told me before that he was thinking about 
you I could have acted differently. You never tell me 
anything. I know you’re modern and I’m old-fashioned. I 
can’t get used to there not being perfect confidence between 
mother and child. It seems dreadful to me. I will try and 


SECRET DRAMA 


148 

look at things with your eyes; I do. But I can’t bear—to— 
think—that you’re suffering, and I . . 

“Oh, mother, do you want to drive me frantic? You 
really are perfectly maddening.” 

Marie began to walk backwards and forwards, her face 
crimson, her features swollen with passion. “You say the 
most idiotic things and make me swear at you, and then 
you begin on my brutality. For—heaven’s sake—leave— 
me—alone. Do you imagine I’m breaking my heart because 
one of your virtuous bourgeois women has roped in Hob? 
I don’t care a damn what Miss Baird may do.” She 
laughed shrilly. 

“But he wanted you, Marie; you expected him to . . 

“Good Lord, a hundred men have wanted me! Is it my 
destitution you’re mourning over? I should imagine it’s 
Miss Baird for whom Hob is the one and only. Not me. 
Her condition is positively pathetic. How frightful if after 
such strenuous endeavors she hadn’t netted him! May will 
shout. And now, not another word. And listen, mother: 
you—are—not to show Hob your interest in him. Your 
manner has been perfectly awful all the time. Tell you 
things! It isn’t safe to. You never by any chance act 
sanely.” 

She picked up the comb and began to drag it through 
her hair. 

Thunder muttered. Faint and small, voices ran with it. 
Silence. The clouds muttered again, cracked, and grew si¬ 
lent on a moan. 

She wasn’t precious to Marie, nor essential. In Marie’s 
life she was nothing but an irritation^ a cloud, a superfluity. 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 


149 


She stood dumb and sightless with pain. The room was a 
featureless void to her, but she had mental visions which 
filled her with despair. She saw Marie receding from her; 
inexorably Marie was placing great spaces between them; 
spiritually she was melting beyond sight, beyond reach of 
appeal. 

She was born in this room. Her cradle had stood in it— 
not long ago—a little while ago. 

She was born of this body. She was thrusting her mother 
away, escaping. 

With a loud cry Mrs. Jesson turned upon Marie. “Marie 
darling, don’t be like this to me. Why won’t you tell me 
the truth? Did he really love you or were you mistaken? 
If he hadn’t seen Miss Baird . . .” 

Marie leapt out of her arms. At the same moment the 
door opened and Miss Hammond came in. 

The mother and daughter turned, Marie still savage, Mrs. 
Jesson’s face still twisted in desperate appeal. 

Miss Hammond opened her mouth, but a crash of thunder 
made her soundless; she stood, clutching the door-handle, 
glaring palely, voicing syllables without effect. The thunder 
thudded along the sky like the withdrawing moan of surges 
along a high shore. It lapsed in a sigh whose expiration 
was like a death. In the sky there developed a boiling and 
furious sound. 

Miss Hammond spoke. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know Marie 
was here. I only came to say that it’s tea-time and Miss 
Wilson is talking to Miss Baird on the verandah. I think 
she must have forgotten the time. I didn’t like to call 
her. Shall I put on the kettle? So sorry to interrupt.” 


150 


SECRET DRAMA 


Her eyes went from one to the other; then she looked 
round the room, she slightly advanced her head and shoul¬ 
ders and glanced round the door. Her eyes came back to the 
mother and daughter. 

“Of course put the kettle on,” Marie exclaimed. “Will 
you never understand that you needn’t ask permission for 
everything you do? This thunder’s given me a rabid head. 
Perfectly putrid household. Oh, don’t look so scared, 
Bessie. I’ll see to the tea. I know I shall get it if I do it 
myself. I suppose Miss Wilson is congratulating Miss 
Baird. Now don’t either of you get doing anything. I’ll 
set the table. Only, for the Lord’s sake, leave me alone.” 

With her hair still hanging loose she walked past Miss 
Hammond and down the passage. 

Mrs. Jesson almost ran towards the door. “Marie!” 

Marie was going; the scene was closed; they mightn’t be 
alone again together for hours. If she let Marie escape 
now she lost her for ever. She uttered a sobbing cry. She 
couldn’t endure this—the most important thing of Marie’s 
life—love, marriage—and she was cast out from it, im¬ 
potent, disdained. 

“Marie!” she cried. “Marie—darling—wait just a 

minute.” 

Seeing Bessie’s figure in the doorway, she thrust out her 
big arm and hurried on blindly. Bessie turned, flattened 
herself against the door, her eyes immense and stark with 
fright. 

“Marie, don’t leave me like this. You oughtn’t to treat 
me like this.” 

She went down the passage, down the stairs, tears rolling 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 


151 

on to her parted lips. She heard a little squeak from 
Bessie. “I’m coming. Don’t go. Do wait for me.” 

The words, the tone, had no meaning for Mrs. Jesson. 
She was made quite wild by a sense of tragedy. She did 
not dare to think, to be calm. Terrible insights, devastating 
certitudes, were round the fringes of her mind, muttering 
and thronging. She fled from them. They weren’t true, 
they weren’t true. Marie wasn’t cruel, selfish, reckless. 
She loved Hob; she was made like this by suffering. If 
Bessie hadn’t come in just then she would have been in her 
mother’s arms—a little girl again—Mrs. Jesson’s baby. Oh, 
the thunder! 

Hurrying across the hall, she made no sound herself as it 
crashed over the house, but a faint shriek came from Bes¬ 
sie, ceasing as if throttled by the running uproar. The 
hall was black; a ghostly and narrow smear of gray, the 
window lay on one side of it like a discolored wound. The 
place smelt of' fog, of earth, of nooks of rotted vegetation. 

She called loudly, “Marie!” 

She had a furious resentful feeling that Bessie was pat¬ 
tering after her. On this sacred scene no one ought to in- 

t 

trude. 

She swept, crying, passionate, shaking violently, into the 
kitchen. 

“Marie, we can’t leave it like this. It’s too much for me. 
Do try and understand what I feel, darling. . . .” 

She stopped. After a moment she said in a hoarse voice, 
“I want to be—what pleases you, Marie.” 

She was not crying now. Marie’s face had produced in 
her a perfect immobility. She looked at Marie. The light 


SECRET DRAMA 


152 

in the room was a misshapen, moribund thing, unsteadily 
floating with a corpse-like hue on the prevailing darkness. 
It touched her face. Marie was in gloom. 

“You’re hysterical,” Marie said, not angrily, but with a 
contemptuous kindness. “I thought I heard you bawling 
after me.” She turned and looked at the kettle. “You 
shall have a cup of tea in a tick. Go into the drawing¬ 
room and lie down. I’ll bring you your tea. I can’t imag¬ 
ine what you’re making all this fuss about. Melodramatic 
person. I understand what you feel—all your sentiment. 
I know it. It’s prehistoric, but that’s of no account to 
you. If I’ve hurt you, I’m sorry. Why you should be 
hurt because I’m honest with you is a mystery to me. 
You’re the best woman in the world; that’s why you’re so 
difficult to live with. Now May, who, I suppose, isn’t fit 
for respectable society at all, is the easiest person for a life- 
partner. Go along to the couch. Where’s the tea? Fly now, 
I hate to be mounted guard over when I’m doing anything. 
Is that Bessie prowling behind you? Good Lord, you’re all 
daft together. Go away, Bessie. You—shall—have—your 
—tea—directly. Only go. Both of you. Oh, damn this 
lid!” 

Mrs. Jesson went out. She walked past Bessie with an in¬ 
tent and vacant look. She entered the drawing-room. 

hi 

She walked into the middle of the room and then stopped. 
She fumbled in her skirt and, finding her pocket, pulled up 
a wisp of scented handkerchief and rubbed it over her face. 


ONE PART OF THE HOUSE 


153 

She suddenly noticed that she felt rather sick; her knees 
were trembling. 

Stiffly, carefully, as over a rocking floor, she went to 
the chesterfield. She sat down, her legs wide apart, her 
damp hands trembling on her knees. 

She had a desolate and affrighted look. She was not 
thinking; she was conscious only of an immense bereave¬ 
ment. She had nothing. This was not a thought; it was 
a state of being. Impoverished, alone, unregarded and un¬ 
desired: she was all these things. 

She heard Marie moving about. Marie was not hers. 

She lifted both hands to her cheeks. “She don’t mean 
it; it’s because she’s unhappy. It’s her way of talking. It 
isn’t that she’s hard. I shall be ill if I worry so.” 

She looked darkly around. The things in the room looked 
back at her with a dull and ironic stare. The tragedy of 
her solitude in this room lay bald and stark before her. 
She realized it. Tears ran down her cheeks again, and she 
pressed her puffy fingers on her eyelids till her lashes were 
glued to her cheeks. 

“I can’t bear scenes with her. I shall never be anything 
to her ... no restraint. . . . I’ve lost her. . . . I’m afraid 
. . . what’ll she do. . . . The time I’ve been thinking of 
so . . . marrying her . . . making her safe . . . and she 
throws me off.” 

She heard Marie’s step in the hall. Instantly she rubbed 
the handkerchief over her face. When Marie came in with 
the tray she turned round; she smiled. 


CHAPTER IV 


ANOTHER PART OF THE HOUSE 

i 

Dido had met Hob on the Green. She knew he was there 
hoping he might meet her, reluctant to come to the house 
because of Marie. He went with her to the Stores and 
then walked back with her. 

She was very happy. 

But as they approached St. Hubert’s they saw Maria, 
Hilda, and Miss Wilson, the former leaving the house, the 
latter about to enter it. 

Marie waved her hand and piercingly gazed at them all. 
She smiled, made some allusion to the sky, and walked away, 
nonchalant, happy. 

Dido did not look after her. Marie—she could be disre¬ 
garded; it was Hilda who so tenderly must be observed. 
Now, with Hob by Dido’s side, discovered enjoyably bend¬ 
ing over Dido, taking occasionally, for pure happiness, spon¬ 
taneously dancing steps, Hilda must know. She did know. 
Dido discerned knowledge in her steady, clear stare. 

With a feeling of guilt and yet resenting that feeling as 
causeless, Dido refrained from further scrutiny of her cousin. 
She moved her eyes to Miss Wilson, who, her hand on the 
door, candidly exhibited to them all a soft, foolish delight 
and sympathy. 

Involuntarily Dido smiled. Then she was annoyed. Miss 

154 





ANOTHER PART OF THE HOUSE 155 

Wilson would think she was drawing attention to her es¬ 
corted state, whereas it was merely amused perception of 
their mutual romance which had drawn that acknowledg¬ 
ment from her. We were all so absurdly sentimental. It 
was only necessary for some one to utter “All the world 
loves a lover” and the last fatuous touch would be given to 
the scene. 

But there was something feminine and youthful and—and 
familiar about this woman; a delicate agitation; a light, a 
warmth, as if one gazed at oneself in a mirror. 

Dido felt as if something had leapt at her blindingly, 
some fact. Hob was no longer talking. The surface of her 
mind grasped this and she turned, again remembering Hilda; 
she said good-by to him, and went in with Hilda. Miss 
Wilson was in front of them, going towards the kitchen. 

Silently Dido and Hilda ascended the stairs. 

From below a high voice called, “Is that you, Miss 
Baird?” 

“Yes, Miss Hyde. We shall be down in five minutes.” 

“It’s all ready.” Miss Hyde’s rapid sentences bubbled 
like water out of hearing. 

The girls went into their bedroom. 

Hilda took off her hat, giving her pure, cold profile to 
Dido. 

“How frightfully hot it is!” Dido exclaimed. “We shall 
have a storm.” 

In her nervousness she spoke very quickly. 

Hilda turned to her. “What say?” 

Blank, white, uncomprehending—oh, Hilda, what really 
do you feel? These horrible dissimulations, and barriers, 


156 SECRET DRAMA 

and repulses. How quickly one was out of touch; how far 
Hilda had receded! 

Dido repeated her words. 

“Yes, I think we shall/’ Hilda calmly answered. She sat 
down on the edge of the bed and began to take off her shoes. 

Dido, standing large and alert, subtly appealing, in the 
center of the room, spoke in a distinct, too animated, voice. 

“Do you know, I’m in possession of Miss Hammond’s 
( history at last. It’s frightfully exciting. Mr. Ramsay told 
it me this morning.” Her childish cheeks crimsoned. She 
had a pause, looking soft, shy, excited, but as if she were 
not very far from tears. 

Hilda presented to her faintly surprised and unsympa¬ 
thetic eyes, lips glued together, the brow of a Madonna. 

Dido continued, rather breathlessly, “Miss Jesson told it 
him directly she knew Mrs. Jesson was bringing Miss Ham¬ 
mond over. Miss Hammond is mental. Her father died 
some years ago, quite mad. And Miss Hammond nursed 
him. He wasn’t dangerous, so they didn’t put him away. 
And Miss Hammond had a breakdown after it—it must have 
been frightful, mustn’t it?—and she used to go out on the 
common—they lived at Streatham—with her hair down and 
wander about, and a clergyman found her once and brought 
her home. And—it was most unfortunate—all this hap¬ 
pened at the time when the raids were on. You remember 
bombs were dropped at Streatham?” 

She had been speaking with her gaze lowered, but now 
she darted a glance at Hilda. Did Hilda look faintly in¬ 
terested, troubled, hostile, sad? Hilda’s gaze was inscrut' 
able. 


ANOTHER PART OF THE HOUSE 


i57 

“Yes,” Hilda said in a very high key, her brows lifting 
too, so that she seemed in the act of soaring away. 

“Well, one fell near her house and terrified her. She 
then developed the delusion that some one was instigating 
the Germans to kill her. Poor thing. She kept moving all 
over England wherever she could get rooms—in a dreadful 
state of panic—and at the end of the war, directly it was 
possible, she went to America to her cousins out there, think¬ 
ing, you know, that she would evade her enemy. And as 
nothing has happened to her since, she imagines that her 
cousins and every one—it’s a universal conspiracy, I think— 
have united to save her from this enemy. That’s why she 
thanks us all. On everything else she’s quite sane. But 
she still thinks her enemy is looking for her, and they have 
to be awfully careful to keep up the fiction that she’s quite 
safe and they’re quite safe or she’ll imagine she’s being 
tracked and they know it. I should never have thought of 
such a solution of her mystery. . . . Are you ready?” 

“Quite.” 

They looked at each other. Then Hilda walked to the 
door. “Poor old thing. Oh, the window. Will you close 
it? There’s sure to be a lot of rain and it will beat in 
so.” 

She went out, gazing straight ahead, walking with author¬ 
ity, somehow unanswerable, enigmatical. 

Dido closed the window. Everything was spoilt. She 
was no longer happy. She wanted to think of Hob, recalling 
his words and glances, delicately divining the future, smiling 
to herself, mysterious and tender, and she was forced to 
think of Hilda. 


158 


SECRET DRAMA 


“Does she care for him or is it only vanity?” she thought. 

It seemed to her that she did not know Hilda at all. A 
feeling of impotence irritated her. She could see every 
detail of Hilda’s face and figure, she remembered that only 
the staircase lay between them, and yet she had a sense of 
Hilda as being inaccessible, mistress of herself, unresponsive 
to pressure. 

“For two years we’ve lived with each other,” she mused, 
going out of the room, “and yet directly I’m ruffled I feel 
miles away from every one, and directly Hilda’s ruffled 
there’s gulfs between us. I can’t imagine Hilda violently in 
love—but she’s sentimental—in a way—oh, I don’t know 
her. It’s wretched. I can’t be happy while we’re estranged. 
And yet I am happy—somewhere in me I am—and it’s being 
happy while Hilda’s miserable that makes me unhappy. 
Perfectly poisonous, as he’d say.” 

She laughed, and then uneasily looked round her, im¬ 
pressed by some inimical quality in the silence and moody 
shadowiness of the house. She felt as if by laughing she was 
guilty of sacrilege, heartlessness, stupidity. 

“It was my fault at the beginning, insinuating that I 
thought he admired her. He was merely natural and 
friendly with her; he is still; he was just the same to her 
this morning; he likes her; dear Hilda; he sees how good 
she is. And he was stiff with me while he found out whether 
he really was falling in love with me. He hasn’t altered to 
Hilda at all; only to me.” 

She darted round the hall a radiant little glance. Sullen, 
airless, it stared at her, unmeaning shapes receiving her 
bright look. 


ANOTHER PART OF THE HOUSE 


i59 


She became again obscurely uneasy. 

She went into the dining-room. 

n 

Lunch was a constrained and chilling meal. Hilda was 
not silent; she talked, perhaps, a little more than usual, 
but she was affirmative rather than suggestive. Outwardly, 
at least, she seemed confident and unvexed. Her eyes ex¬ 
pressed a cold pity for any one who could not see the reason 
and correctness of her own attitudes. 

Miss Hyde, who, in her position as “companion,” had 
meals with them, was profoundly gloomy. Whenever the 
cousins were not speaking she began at once in a grumbling 
little voice, jerking her head, resentfully and hopelessly star¬ 
ing round, jabbing the air and her food with her fork, put¬ 
ting both knife and fork down suddenly to press dramat¬ 
ically some part of her body. 

“Oh, I do feel bad to-day,” she said. “I don’t know 
what’s the matter with me. I hope I’m not going to be bad. 
I feel as if I am. Funny. That’s what I feel. I expect 
I’m going to get something. It’s the thunder; that’s what it 
is. Upset me. I do feel bad. I think I’ve a pain at my 
heart.” She dropped knife and fork. “There! When I 
turn like that—I had it then. A pain. A kind of—oh, I 
don’t know how to describe it. Most unpleasant. It’s the 
thunder; that’s what it is. Upset me. I do hope I’m not 
going to have an attack. So awkward for you.” 

“Lie down this afternoon,” Dido said. “We can get tea 
ourselves.” 


160 SECRET DRAMA 

“That’s very kind of you, but you’re always kind. That’s 
why I like to keep well. It worries me to feel I’m giving 
you trouble. If I lay down I couldn’t sleep—not if there’s 
thunder. I haven’t slept at all well lately. It’s that that’s 
upset me—that and the weather. Last night I lay till three 
—no, four—and I counted sheep jumping over a fence, and 
up to a hundred. I couldn’t sleep. And then just as I was 
dropping off Miss Jesson came up and that woke me. I 
don’t like to say anything, but I like people to be thought¬ 
ful. Miss Jesson’s very nice, very nice indeed—but she for¬ 
gets there are other people in the house. And Miss Wilson 
kept turning over in bed. I could hear the bed creak. She 
couldn’t sleep. Oh, well, perhaps it was pleasant thoughts 
kept her awake, but I wanted to go to sleep. I do my think¬ 
ing in the day. If I could have had my salts this morning 
I should have been better, but I had them yesterday, and I 
don’t like to take them too often. It’s lowering; lowers the 
tone of the body. . . . There! There’s that pain again. 
When I turned. I wonder what it is. I shall go to the 
doctor if it keeps on. I don’t believe in neglecting yourself. 
It might be something dangerous. I do hope it isn’t. 
I’ve never had it before. I do hope I’m not going to be 
bad.” 

“I expect it’s indigestion,” Hilda said. 

Momentarily checked, Miss Hyde looked at Hilda. Then 
she moved her eyes away. 

“Yes. Perhaps it is.” She became quite still and silent, 
staring at a salt-cellar. 

Positively Hilda had the effect of a piece of ice inserting 


ANOTHER PART OF THE HOUSE 161 


itself between objects and sending them far off from each 
other. Dido made an effort to capture Miss Hyde and, as 
it were, re-establish her in communion. 

“You’re tired, Miss Hyde. If you don’t lie down I shall 
write and tell mother you’re guilty of insubordination. I’ll 
bring you a book. And I’ll see to the tea. We shan’t go 
out. I want to get Southey’s Commonplace book and see 
how many of the quotations I can place. You read, you 
know, keeping your hand over the authority.” 

She laughed, glancing from Miss Hyde to Hilda. 

“I should think you must want something to do,” Hilda 
said, with a wide, unsympathetic look. 

Dido laughed again, forcing out nervous jerks. She stared 
at the tablecloth, miserable and dismayed. 

Miss Hyde looked at her—a dim, regretful look. Then 
she gazed ahead, moving her head as in acquiescence, set¬ 
tling her mobile lips. No one spoke. 

Dido was appalled to find that she wanted to cry. She 
never cried. But it was horrible so constantly to be thrust 
back into loneliness, having such imperfect vision, under¬ 
standing so little, encountering everywhere barriers, veils, 
gulfs. 

Poor Hilda. And Miss Hyde was miserable; Marie was 
savage with chagrin; the ostentatious lightness of her walk 
as she retreated this morning had betrayed that; Mrs. Jes- 
son last night looked tragically brooding; nowhere was there 
tranquillity, harmony, joy. People couldn’t live at peace 
with each other; didn’t really live with each other at all. 
They lived alone. And, perpetually striving for alliance 


SECRET DRAMA 


162 

with strangers, they blundered, hurt, fought, always clash¬ 
ing but never allied. 

Wretched, wretched. 


in 

After lunch they sat on the verandah reading or watch¬ 
ing the development of the storm. They did not speak. 
They sedulously avoided looking at each other. 

Gradually Dido ceased to gaze at Robert Southey. She 
fixed her eyes on the intense and savage sky; she listened to 
the voices which outside the cottages at the end of the 
garden, rose weakly, inflected with a consciousness of won¬ 
der, ignorance, and expectation. She could just see above 
the hedge small white ovals of face upturned like her own. 
Darkness was sliding over the verandah, the light on the 
garden withered. There was a shudder of wind in the trees. 

The drawing-room door opened and she heard footsteps. 
Both she and Hilda looked round. 

Miss Wilson stood irresolute in the middle of the room. 
“I’m sorry,” she said, making a nervous clutch at the dan¬ 
gling locket. “I didn’t know any one was out there. I know 
Miss Jesson’s out and Mrs. Jesson’s lying down. I thought 
perhaps I’d better shut the window. I don’t think it will 
be long before the storm breaks.” 

She came to the beginning of the verandah. Timidly, 
yet with a smile, she looked at them. Her face grew 
flushed. 

“Oh, good gracious,” Dido thought, with a sense of tragi¬ 
comedy, “here’s some one else seeking a confidant and a 
support.” 


ANOTHER PART OF THE HOUSE 163 

Well, anything was better than solitude with Hilda. Miss 
Wilson so obviously bore a magnificent burden. Let her 
relieve herself of it by speech. 

Dido smiled merrily at her. “We shan’t come in until 
we’re driven,” she said. “Are you afraid of storms?” 

“No, not very.” Miss Wilson moved a little farther on 
to the verandah; she rested her palms on a table behind 
her, half sitting on the table. Meeting Dido’s gaze, she 
laughed suddenly and shortly, afterwards looking down and 
working her lips. 

Hilda stared at her, surprised, but more passive and bland 
than she had been for the last few hours. 

Miss Wilson glanced up again; she began to rub her 
palms on the edge of the table. “Sometimes they give me 
a headache, but to-day I haven’t one. I think—how you 
feel in your spirits—makes a difference. If you’ve any 
worry—or disappointment—the darkness seems to make it 
worse. At least, I’ve always found it does. But when 
you’re happy—you—you,” she rubbed feverishly, she 
laughed, bending her head, “you make your own sunshine, 
I suppose.” 

Furtively but with a subdued gleam her brown eyes 
moved round to them under her lids. 

“I suppose you do.” Dido laughed. There was a high, 
amazed, but amiable little sound from Hilda. 

Miss Wilson looked at both girls with liking, with grati¬ 
tude. 

“I mustn’t stop here interrupting you in your reading,” 
she said, feigning to move from the table. 

“We aren’t reading,” Dido said. “Please stop, if you’ve 


SECRET DRAMA 


164 

nothing else to do. It must be so fearfully boring by your¬ 
self. I know Miss Hyde is lying down.” 

Miss Wilson did not seem to be interested in Miss Hyde. 
She did not answer this statement. “It’s very kind of you,” 
she said. “I do get rather dull sometimes. People don’t 
always understand that you like to talk sometimes. Of 
course I know I’m only the housekeeper, but if you happen 
to be poorer than other people, and have to work for your 
living, it doesn’t mean you don’t feel things. I’m not used to 
housework; not really; I mean I wasn’t brought up to it. 
I’ve been a school-teacher all my life. I’m not saying that 
every one here hasn’t treated me well. Mrs. Jesson has 
always been most land—and thoughtful. She treats me as 
if I were the same as herself. And Miss Jesson is very 
nice. Only I feel . . . But I oughtn’t to say anything. 
Things get round so. I know you wouldn’t repeat anything 
I told you but . . 

She paused, mysterious, agitated, half laughing, her 
glance speeding about with an air unquiet and yet de¬ 
lighted. 

Dido became a little alarmed. She was curious and she 
was sympathetic, but she could not forget that Miss Wilson 
belonged to “that class of people,” while Marie, however 
inwardly coarse she might be, was superficially . . . Dido’s 
thoughts broke off. She hated herself for these distinc¬ 
tions. 

“But I can’t listen to criticisms of Marie”—she resumed 
her quick reflections. “Miss Wilson’s confidence in my 
loyalty to her is very touching, .but I think she ought to 
spare me. She thinks so herself, but she’s dying to go on.” 


ANOTHER PART OF THE HOUSE 165 

Gently Dido lowered her eyes, suggesting agreement with 
Miss Wilson’s reticence. 

Miss Wilson, however, went on. “One can’t help noticing 
things. I know people notice and it’s natural they should 
be jealous—and—and anxious. It’s natural. So long as 
you’re—well, poor—or—or unfortunate—you have plenty of 
friends, but directly you—directly anything”—she swallowed, 
and then drew a long breath; the frill round her collar 
flapped as she moved her head, she gripped the tables as 
if this alone helped her to retain the last vestiges of her 
self-control—“any happiness comes to one, you’re talked 
about—and disliked. It’s jealousy. I quite understand 
it. I don’t expect anything different.” 

What in the world did she mean? Dido and Hilda stared 
at her. They became infected by her emotion. When 
lightning gleamed bluey-yellow across the dun verandah and 
thunder, distant and restrained before, crashed out above 
their heads, they both sprang up with a cry. 

“It’s begun,” Miss Wilson said placidly. “Come inside. 
It’s not safe there.” 

“How we squealed!” Dido exclaimed, picking up her 
book. 

They all entered the drawing-room. Hilda and Miss 
Wilson paused there, facing each other, but Dido, after a 
glance at them both, continued to move towards the door. 
Her progress had almost the look of a flight. And she felt 
that she was flying. She felt that any moment Miss Wilson 
would rend their ignorance to shreds and reveal herself, fully, 
startlingly. Dido dreaded that revelation. With instinctive 
prudence or selfishness she tried to escape it. 1 She had ob- 


166 


SECRET DRAMA 


.scurely the feeling that if she knew Miss Wilson she would, 
in some mysterious way, be responsible for her. Something 
would be demanded: guardianship, support, guidance. 

Dido opened the door. She knew that Hilda was close 
behind her, that Miss Wilson was following. 

She crossed the hall. “We shall have a glorious view of 
it from the porch, Hilda,” she exclaimed. 

“I suppose it’s safe?” Hilda observed. 

“Doesn’t it look grand?” Miss Wilson murmured. 

They were all in the porch, huddled together in a corner, 
gazing through the outer door at the storm. For a moment 
they were silent; Dido felt Hilda’s warm body pressing her 
on one side and Miss Wilson’s on the other. She felt 
soberly but not unhappily that she was a captive; she 
couldn’t escape Miss Wilson; she no longer desired to. 

The sky was a sweeping black foam; it simmered audibly. 
As they gazed, there dashed from it white hail which rattled 
on the roof, on the tiled path, on the windows. Struck by 
the huge, luridly shining hailstones, the three horses gal¬ 
loped off the Green. Crashes of thunder and dancing twists 
of lightning, the bubble of streaming channels, the softly 
ferocious hiss of the gray rain, the extinction of all contours 
—these distracted Dido from her companions. 

Miss Wilson’s voice rose, weak and urgent, at her 
shoulder. 

“I found out long ago that it didn’t do to expect too much 
of people. You’re always disappointed if you do. I’ve 
been mistaken in so many people—thinking they were bet¬ 
ter than they were, you know. I can quite understand— 
knowing what people are—that Miss Jesson doesn’t like me. 


ANOTHER PART OF THE HOUSE 167 

I don’t mean to say she isn’t always quite nice, but I know 
that all the time—she’s thinking—well—perhaps I oughtn’t 
to say it—feeling I mean—it sounds conceited I know, but 
it’s the truth—I don’t see why I should pretend I don’t no¬ 
tice it—I know she’s feeling that I’ve robbed her.” She 
laughed hysterically. “I daresay if he hadn’t seen me he 
might have liked her. I’m sure if she’s upset I’m sorry. 
But I don’t feel I’ve—that I’ve anything to reproach myself 
with. It isn’t as if I—I put myself out to—to—well, at¬ 
tract him. He showed the very first time that-” 

She sought for words, but she could no longer go on. She 
was trembling violently. Again she laughed. 

Dido and Hilda stood motionless, staring at the water 
rushing with a yellow gleam down the road. 

“I don’t say I should have expected him to look at me,” 
Miss Wilson gaspingly resumed, “but it shows men don’t 
think about dress but—but the woman. I could tell at 
once that—he was coming after me. I know you’ve all 
noticed it. I shouldn’t have said anything now—only—you 
—you looked so friendly—not as if you remembered my 
position here. I don’t think people always realize how— 
how much good their sympathy does—and I did feel it 
would do me good just to speak about it to—to some one 
who wouldn’t feel—well, that I was robbing them. Miss 
Hyde has been very friendly up to now, but she’s jealous 
now. I know she is. And I knew you wouldn’t be.” She 
looked at Dido with a soft significance, her eyes quickly 
dropping again. “You’re happy yourself. I feel you 
understand. I-” 


She stopped. The thud of feet on the staircase brought 




i68 


SECRET DRAMA 


their eyes to the door which shut them off from the hail. 
They saw Marie pass to the kitchen; they glimpsed her de¬ 
termined face overhung by floating hair. She had not seen 
them. 

Involuntarily they rocked towards each other as a root 
of lightning stamped the sky, and the porch flared up. The 
thunder broke on them with a sound like the fall of ruined 
cities in some other and disregarded world. Battered and 
amazed by it they stared, scarcely intelligently, at Mrs. 
Jesson running downstairs, pursued by Miss Hammond, 
whose eyes, standing out of her head, rolled blindly and 
mournfully. 

Then again the hall was empty. They looked at each 
other. Miss Wilson seemed impenetrable to the sugges¬ 
tions of the house. She had forgotten tea. Mistily she 
smiled, she began to laugh. She looked down, rosy and 
trembling in the ecstasy of her thoughts. 

Dido tried to speak, but when she sought for words her 
heart-beat quickened; the necessity of answering Miss Wil¬ 
son appalled her. 

They stood, quite silent and musing, for a few moments. 
Then Miss Wilson exclaimed: 

“They must have come down for tea. I’d quite for¬ 
gotten.” 

Laughing emotionally, she regarded them. She seemed to 
find their uneasy and serious smiles adequate answer. “I 
dare say I’ve been boring you with my chatter,” she said, 
“but I do feel that it’s done me good. Good-by.” 

She slipped, vibrating wildly, into the hall. 

“Oh, good heavens!” Dido exclaimed. 


ANOTHER PART OF THE EIOUSE 169 

She gazed at Hilda, and Hilda, intimately, cloudlessly, 
returned her look. 

With a throb of joy she perceived this. She beamed on 
Hilda, as if to accelerate Hilda’s progress back to her. 
“Jimmy Ainger,” she whispered. “She must mean him.” 

“I never heard of anything so extraordinary,” Hilda 
ejaculated. “She must be a very silly woman, I should 
imagine.” 

“Yes. But I don’t feel able to laugh. It’s a tragedy for 
her. What a monstrous delusion! When she’s unde¬ 
ceived! ” 

In the midst of her eloquent gestures she was arrested by 
the sudden immobility of Hilda’s eyes, the dull color coming 
into Hilda’s face. 

With an inward gasp she discerned the parallelism be¬ 
tween Hilda’s position and Miss Wilson’s. Both had, un¬ 
justifiably, imagined themselves admired. 

But there was no similarity between the two cases! Miss 
Wilson’s was a colossal madness; Hilda’s a pardonable 
mistake. 

But Hilda thought Dido mentally classed them together. 
She was wounded, angered, and filled with shame. 

How could Hilda misunderstand Dido so? 

Appealingly Dido looked at her. 

Elilda turned away. “Isn’t it time we saw about our 
tea?” she said, and went into the hall. 

With a gesture of irritation as if she flung off all the 
shadows the house was massing around her, Dido followed. 


CHAPTER V 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 

i 

They met Marie, who was taking into the drawing-room a 
tray of tea-things. She smiled with closed lips and un¬ 
fathomable, keen eyes. Behind her came Miss Hammond. 

One large yellow hand lay clenched on Miss Hammond’s 
bosom. She was walking near the wall, brushing it with 
her shoulder, moving her feet slowly and with deliberate 
quietness. Over Hilda’s dark and delicate head she looked 
at Dido. 

Dido smiled. 

Pressing against the wall, the back of her head touching 
it, her white stare on Dido, she said breathlessly: “Such 
trouble. I wonder why. All the kind people there are 
about. Do you know why we’re troubled?” 

There was no emotion in her voice, no expression, except 
watchfulness, in her gaze. 

Dido said: “No. I dare say it’s the storm. There’s 
nothing to be troubled about, I’m sure.” 

“How nice,” Miss Hammond answered without enthu¬ 
siasm, without a smile. “Perhaps we shan’t be soon—if it’s 
only the storm. So nice not to be worried about anything.” 

She continued to advance towards the drawing-room. 

170 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 


171 

Dido went into the kitchen. Miss Hyde was there, talk¬ 
ing to Hilda. 

“I got up,” she cried. “I feel ever so much better. I am 
so glad. The pain’s quite gone. I don’t want that. I was 
frightened. I am glad it’s gone. I hope it won’t come again. 
Nasty old thing! I’ve quite enough with my head and my 
neuritis and my chilblains without having my heart bad. 
I’m sure! I am glad it’s gone. I feel so much brighter. 
That was you letting me lie down. Kind and thoughtful. 
I always said you were. Jolly.” 

Pensively Dido listened. She was set now in the very 
heart of the house. Luminous and simple it lay around her. 
There was now no distance between her and the figures in it. 
These figures were no longer mysterious. She knew them. 

Without speaking she helped Hilda set the tray. Un¬ 
hesitatingly she brought the silver teapot, the milk jug, the 
sugar basin; she opened the case of spoons, she swung the 
silver cake-basket, and all the time she gazed at a vision of 
the house, seeing the figures converging to her, irresistibly 
impelled by the power of their peculiar desires or passions. 

At this moment she felt that nothing was concealed from 
her. She thought that complete, finished characters sprang 
up as, rapidly, she reviewed her knowledges: Miss Wilson’s 
tremendous sentiment, irrational beliefs, and theoretical 
vision of life; Miss Hyde happy merely through her con¬ 
tacts with others, and oppressed at times by the truth of the 
imperfection of these contacts, the egoism and indifference 
of others, the inequality of life; injustice, sadness, loneli¬ 
ness; Miss Hammond, “mental”; Mrs. Jesson, jealous, fierce, 
unjust; Marie- 



172 


SECRET DRAMA 


Dido’s mind arbitrarily thrust upon her the fact that, 
for the time at least, all these people were living in and 
were inspired to greater self-revelation by an emotional at¬ 
mosphere which she alone had created. If she were not in 
the house these people might be different. She, not Marie, 
was the provocative influence. Because of her they were 
expressing themselves in word and action. 

And at once she saw how incomplete her knowledges were. 
These people, disordered by her presence, were working out 
their characters and—immense mystery again—she could 
not divine the directions they moved in. She saw their im¬ 
mediate reactions but an hour hence—what would any one 
of them say or do then? She didn’t know. Darkness, 
silence. She was without certitude. 

She opened a biscuit tin with an abrupt movement. 

“I’m sure I can’t be in love,” she thought. “I’ve hardly 
thought of him since. The whole things seems hopelessly 
involved with other people. It’s a most electric atmosphere. 
I could really believe that something was going to happen. 
How absurd!” 

Miss Hyde’s chatter ran on. Dido moved quickly near 
to Hilda. Hilda raised a stubbornly uncomprehending face. 
She picked up the tray and went out with it. 

Oh, it was wretched. To have, just when she should be 
happy, voluptuously brooding over her romance, full of 
hope and gentle excitement, maturing, dreaming, all these 
inimical waves of other people’s feelings rolling up to her, 
menacing her with a storm. It was like that. Seeing, hear¬ 
ing, feeling, the rush and babble of the first waves with a 
sense of the great sea unquiet and strong beyond. . 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 


173 


She turned impulsively to Miss Hyde. “Isn’t everything 
fearfully quiet! I feel all on edge.” She laughed naturally. 
“I’m so glad you’re better. The house seems to me as if 
every one’s ill. I want to walk on tip-toe.” 

She was caught back into light, tranquillity, warmth, by 
the fineness of Miss Hyde’s response. 

Miss Hyde seized Dido’s hand and pressed it close be¬ 
tween both her own. She shook it up and down. “You 
must be out of sorts. You’re always so bright. Saucy— 
that’s what I call you. It’s the gloomy weather. You’re 
depressed. Like I was. You’ll be better when you’ve had a 
cup of tea. Now you go along and sit down and I’ll give 
you a cup. You’re nervy. I’m going to nurse you—that’s 
what I’m going to do. I’m all right, thanks to you—that 
pain’s quite gone. I thought it might come back when I 
moved about, but it hasn’t. Now you’re not to do a thing. 
A good cup of tea, and a pill to-night. It’s the weather. 
Nasty heavy days. They’re depressing. Come along.” 

Dido laughed. She let Miss Hyde pull her towards the 
door. Tenderly she gazed down at the peak of gray hair, 
the wedge of pale, shining, odd face below. 

With archness Miss Hyde glanced back. “You’re over¬ 
excited. I know. You want your mother, that’s who you 
want. Some one to talk to. I can’t take her place, but I’ll 
do my best. Look at me, like a little ship pulling a great 
big one.” 

Dear little woman, ardently hearing and responding to 
the appeals of all those other existences which drifted round; 
continually occupied in demonstrating her own reality, con¬ 
ceiving life only as a splendid companionship with other 


174 


SECRET DRAMA 


mortals, affrighted by any glimpse of incompatibility or 
severance, filled, by the sense of alliance, almost with bliss. 

They crossed the somber hall. The enigmatical and 
reticent spaces of the house lay round them. But they were 
less real than the pressure of Miss Hyde’s hands, warm and 
firm. 

n 

For several hours after tea they sat in their dining-room. 
At eight o’clock Dido put on a waterproof hat and coat 
and went out on to the verandah. 

She stood there, unthinking and grave. Rain was still 
falling, but less violently. Everywhere her eye caught 
wet gleams and fading shapes. 

She stepped off the verandah on to the wanly staring 
pulpy yellow path. Walking backwards and forwards she 
thought of Hob. 

A few minutes later Mrs. Jesson came through the draw¬ 
ing-room on to the verandah. Resting her hand on one of 
its red brick supports she looked at Dido. 

Dido diffidently smiled. 

There was no change in Mrs. Jesson’s gloomy stare. Her 
little, unhappy eyes looked out between red lids which had 
a squeezed-in appearance on either side of her broad and 
massive nose. Her features seemed larger. There was no 
congruity between her expression and her ornaments of 
amber and gold, her elaborate dress. She looked neither 
peaceful nor light. 

“You don’t mind the rain?” she said in a harsh, abrupt 
voice. 


175 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 

“I love it.” 

Unwaveringly Mrs. Jesson studied her. “Marie always 
says Rowe Green looks its best in rain,” she said in the 
same rough tone. “I can’t see it myself. I think it looks 
very dreary. But I’ve never seen the beauty of the place, 
I know. I’ve lived here thirty years and I don’t feel it’s 
home yet.” 

She stared at her hand sprawling on the brickwork. 

“You feel in exile?” Dido suggested. 

Mrs. Jesson looked back with a swift, dim smile. “Yes. 
That’s just what I do feel. I’m an American, you know. 
I long to go back there. I thought I should end my life 
there, but Marie wanted to live here.” 

She stopped, her gaze on the black, glistening trees deli¬ 
cately pointing with their leaves and twigs, motionless, as 
if for ever suspended in that position. A peculiar, thin 
high-light fell on her from the brownish sky. It gave to her 
face and to the evening the look of being touched with a 
blight. 

After a pause of struggle, discernible to Dido though ex¬ 
pressed only in that fixed gaze, that stiff body, she went on. 

“I say I want to go back, and so I do. But I would 
gladly relinquish all thought of returning to have the—the 
certainty that Marie was going to settle down near me, 
if not with me. If ever you’re a mother you’ll know the 
dread, the—the agony you have—fearing some harm will 
befall the child, something—you can’t avert—with all your 
love. I want her to settle down. I shan’t know a moment’s 
peace of mind until I see her married.” 

She turned, with something of grandeur in her directness, 


SECRET DRAMA 


176 

her emphasis. “I think I soon shall see her married. Mr. 
Ramsay comes here to see her. He came down here because 
she is here. She told me that she expected he would ask 
her to marry him. I hope he will. I—I most earnestly 
—hope he will.” 

She stared at Dido, but scarcely saw her. She was ter¬ 
rified by her own action. She waited for Marie to descend 
violently on her, as she might have waited for death. 

But neither voice nor sound followed the despairing reck¬ 
lessness of those words. The thoughts which had deter¬ 
mined her swept again through her mind, insidiously reas¬ 
suring her. 

“He hasn’t gone far,” she thought. “There hasn’t been 
time. If she went away and avoided him he’d come back 
to Marie. I believe if she knew the truth she’d leave him 
alone. She looks a good girl. And he is Marie’s. He came 
here after Marie.” 

Dido said “Yes,” without expression, without a glance. 
She trembled. Her brain shouted a ferocious negation, 
“No, no, no,” but the thing she was repelling was formless, 
vague. 

Mrs. Jesson did not heed the spoken assent, nor guess 
the voiceless denial. She was shaken by a sense of the 
opportunities of her solitude here with Dido. In her desper¬ 
ation she was no longer capable of sane and reasonable per¬ 
ception; she was at the mercy of her impulses. 

Beautiful and seductive illusions floated across her mind. 
She lost sight of the realities of human nature; her heart 
beating unevenly, her thumb brushing cement out from 
the bricks, she gazed, dazzled, at theories of human conduct; 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 


177 


her head became a welter of remembered fragments from 
the didactical poems of Matthew Arnold, Cowper, and New¬ 
man; duty, abnegation—themes of sermons recurred to her. 

The speed of her mental movements made her hot. She 
shook one arm to which her sleeves clung damply. She 
opened her mouth, breathing the earth-smelling air, the 
air heavy with the odors of dead and rotting plants, of scum 
on still water, of soaked hayrick, and massed manure. 

The rain had ceased. The sky to the west was black, 
but a watery yellow burnt weakly in the south, a long slat 
above the woodlands. Over the Green the light slid shaded 
in steel and dim gray. Cold glitters came from leaves hang¬ 
ing and fallen, and the pools were cold and pale like day¬ 
light moons, streams in the sand were thick and without 
gleam; clear and colorless on the road. 

She began to speak. 

“I’m old. I ought to be wiser than you. But it takes us 
all our life to learn things, and then when we have learnt 
them it’s time for us to die. When I look back I can see 
all the things I ought to have done. I should do differently 
now if I had those times over again, but we aren’t given 

the chance. I can see that all my unhappiness-She 

stared at her thumb and the little cloud of falling dust. 

1 

“I have had unhappiness, though my life has been a happy 
one. I had the best man God ever made for a husband, I 
think: And I have a child. My life has been a happy one; 
but pain has come to me and trouble—and—looking back 
—I .see that it all came from not doing my duty—or from 
other people not doing theirs. You can only be happy by 
doing your duty. I’ve learnt that. Sacrifice—and love, 



SECRET DRAMA 


178 

and living for others—and trusting that everything is 

ordered for the best—that means happiness.” 

* 

She forgot that she was speaking with a purpose. She 
smiled at Dido. “Fm seventy, and it’s taken me all my life 
to learn that. And—when I think that Marie has to go 
through all the suffering—and mistakes—before she knows 
it, I . . She looked round her with a blind, glassy 
gaze—“I feel that life is a terrible thing. I can’t tell her. 
She must learn for herself. I can only stand by and watch 
her—making the mistakes I made. Even if she marries she 
isn’t sure of happiness; she can’t have a better man than 
I had, and I made a lot of unhappiness for myself through 
ignorance. But I want her to marry. A good man. She’s 
not like me; she’s clever and artistic. I don’t understand 
a lot of things; I’m—I’m bewildered by modern ways. She 
—she’s modern—and passionate—she feels a lot—she don’t 
know how to be patient—and I can’t help her. I can only 
stand and watch.” 

The silence drowned them both; it held the land with a 
suffocating pressure. The little stones in the path stared 
up like dull eyeballs. Tiny oozing ridges of sand stood 
round Dido’s boots. 

Her cheeks were burning. An immense pity and sorrow 
filled her heart, pity for Mrs. Jesson, pity for herself, sorrow 
over the melancholy, tragic, and beautiful picture of hu¬ 
man life which had formed for her out of Mrs. Jesson’s 

* 

words. She had never before felt so helpless and small. 
She looked up at Mrs. Jesson and longed to run away from 
that sturdy figure, that rugged and furrowed face. Behind 
Mrs. Jesson the drawing-room was a scoop of black; she had 



NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 


179 


a vision of all the rooms as being scooped out black and 
silent from the strong body of the house. Small passionate 
figures passed in smooth procession before her—all the 
people, all the people, converging on her, working out their 
characters, angry, disordered, at a loss. 

Oh, she was miserable and resentful. Even Hob presented 
her with pain and incertitude. Had he loved Marie; be¬ 
haved badly; philandered about from one to the other? 

She met Mrs. Jesson’s eyes. There was something ap¬ 
pealing and beautiful in her flushed round cheeks, her 
unquivering but tender lips, her slightly dilated nostrils, 
her courageous young eyes. She looked large and simple, 
stilled by the sudden apparition of intangible terrors, 
daunted, but not put to flight. 

Mrs. Jesson’s thumb sank deep into the dry cement. She 
felt as if she had come up against something immutable, 
solid, destructive. She felt bruised, and shaken as if with a 

recoil. Dido was pretty. With a growing chill Mrs. Jes- 

> 

son stared at that small, warm, fine round face, that clever 
and youthful brow. 

She had a moment’s vision of her own futility, a sense of 
something inexorable and predestined bearing down upon 
her. With all her love she could not avert this thing. 

She hated Dido. Her eyes glared; she wanted to stride 
out on to the path and with a vehement gesture remove 
that figure. She mumbled, she pulled at her skirt, she felt 
herself rocking in an awful struggle with destiny, with laws 

j 

and conventions, with the supreme force to which nightly 
she prayed. The terror and despair that had swept over 
her in the bedroom this afternoon surged in her again. 


i8o 


SECRET DRAMA 


There was a sharp sound as one of the dining-room case¬ 
ments opened; Marie put out her head; her sparkling black 
glance swept them both. 

“Those buttonholes are ready for you, mother mine,” 
she said. “Are you a good button-holer, Miss Baird? I 
haven’t been reduced to doing them since the days when 
May and I were in Kensington together at the art shop. 
I must tell you about that some day. Remind me. It 
supplied me with some of my loveliest memories. They 
alone will make my old age tolerable.” 

j 

Mrs. Jesson had gone in, instantly, quickly. Dido said 
“Yes.” As Marie glanced round towards the opening din¬ 
ing-room door, Dido almost ran away out of the garden, on 
to the road which sped towards the swimming vapors of 
the hills. 


in 

Mrs. Jesson went up to bed early that night. 

When she reached Miss Hammond’s door she stopped. 
With the stiffness and vacant look of an automaton she put 
her candle down on the table in the recess by Bessie’s door, 
and knocked. 

She heard a stir within and then Miss Hammond’s heady 
little “Yes?” 

“May I come in, Bessie?” 

“Yes. Do. I’m not in bed yet.” 

Mrs. Jesson went in. 

“Why aren’t you in bed, Bessie? You came up some 
time ago.” 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE i8x 

“I know I did. I’ve been reading. I’m going now 
though.” 

Miss Hammond was sitting in an arm-chair by the small 
table near her bed. Her hair was loose; her hands, doubled 
on the neck of her dressing-gown, looked unhealthy and 
inert. A Bible lay open on the table; beside it was a ther¬ 
mos flask and a plate of bread-and-butter. Set between 
these things and the narrow whiteness of the bed, a broad, 
soft, neckless figure, she gazed at Mrs. Jesson. 

Mrs. Jesson said, still holding the door-knob: “You’re 
all right, Bessie? Your head isn’t bad?” 

“It does ache a little; only a little though. Perhaps a 

sleep will do me good.” 

> 

“Well, Bessie, why aren’t you in bed? I think it’s very 
silly when your head’s bad to sit up reading. Would you 
like me to read to you?” 

“No, thank you. So kind of you. You want to go to 
bed yourself. You look tired.” 

“I am tired, Bessie.” 

A crease ran along Miss Hammond’s dressing-gown from 
under her hand as though she had suddenly squeezed the 
stuff. There was a perceptible movement of her eyes which 
made them seem like living things embedded in a senseless 
shape of matter. 

“And afraid?” she brought out sharply—“like you were 
the other night. Tired and afraid.” 

Mrs. Jesson frowned. A hot, airless house, painful 
thoughts, a great weariness of spirit and body, and now 
Bessie to soothe and reassure. 

She spoke in a complaining, exasperated voice. “Oh, 


182 SECRET DRAMA 

Bessie, I told you not to think anything of those words. 
You know that the things I’m afraid of are-” 

She had a pause, staring over that round, bulging head 
in the arm-chair, while she sought for words. Miss Ham¬ 
mond looked with a complete absence of expression into 
the passage where the candlelight wandered like a yellow 
smoke. Her eyes came back to Mrs. Jesson as the latter 
went on. 

“-are the disciplines we all have to endure. There’s 

nothing for you to be afraid of.” She turned, looking un- 
seeingly into the passage, and then pushed the door to. Her 
gaze returned to the wall over Bessie’s head. “It isn’t 
the first time in my life I’ve been afraid. You can’t be a 
mother without seeing danger and pain—and difficulty— 
everywhere. It’s because I can’t force myself to see that 
Marie must take life as it is—that the ways of—of life 
can’t be altered for her. I can’t realize that there’s a— 
a limit to my power. I love her so that I’ve the will to 
stand between her and all trouble. But I haven’t the power. 
There’s something stronger than me. With all my love 
I’m not allowed to—to—avert any disappointment which 
may threaten her. We’re all of us given strength—and— 
free will—to a certain extent, and beyond that extent we’re 
helpless. There’s something greater than us, greater even 
than mother-love.” 

She had forgotten Bessie. She was speaking as before 
a court of inquiry; she was engaged in an endless and 
hopeless argument with an invisible critic, with that passion¬ 
ate and wild counselor—her own heart. 

Silence followed her words. Unwinkingly Bessie looked 




NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 


183 

at her. Outside there were quiet sounds—some one coming 
upstairs, entering the bathroom, the rushing of water into 
the bath, the shutting of a window. 

Mrs. Jesson lowered her eyes to the table. 

“I didn’t come in to talk about myself,” she said, “but 
to see if you were all right. Have you everything you 
want?” 

“Yes, thank you.” 

“You’ve got your bread-and-butter for the night, and 
your flask. Would you like anything now?” 

“No, thank you.” 

Mrs. Jesson stared absently at the meal which was to 
sustain Bessie in the small hours if she could not sleep or 
awoke feeling weak and apprehensive. She felt soothed, 
drugged, by the quietude and simplicity of the room, by 
the passive homely-looking bulk of Bessie’s figure. She 
shrank from the solitude, the memories, the inevitable 
brooding reverie which awaited her in her own room. Be¬ 
yond the curtained window lay not the Surrey fields, the 
Wealden lanes and meadows, the marshlands, the reedy 
watercourses, all sunken in a moonless night, but only the 
night itself, empty, vast, and in the heart of it the luster¬ 
less disk of the sea moaning and stirring, far off—America, 
her sisters, the house there, the rooms bloomed with light 
wherein dark heads turned, and kind, slightly hollowed little 
faces. Her sisters were all like mother; only she resembled 
her father. 

Her throat contracted. Through Bessie she touched that 
continent, that house, those people. But she couldn’t talk 
to Bessie; she mustn’t—Bessie must not be worried. Be- 


SECRET DRAMA 


184 

sides, she wouldn’t understand. Ada would understand; she 
was a mother herself—Ada, her favorite sister. 

Ada—thousands of miles separated her from Ada. Death 
separated her from Henry. She was without an ally, with¬ 
out an accomplice, without a guide. 

“Then you’ve got everything you want, Bessie?” 

“Everything, thank you.” 

“And you’ll go to bed at once, won’t you? It’s so silly 
to sit up.” 

“Yes, I will.” Miss Hammond nodded; her lips parted 
in a smile under motionless, stern eyes. 

“Good night, Bessie.” 

“Good night.” 

Mrs. Jesson went out from the room with a vague sense 
of it as being beyond the revolutions of thought and feeling, 
stable, serene. Wood, china, fabric, and Bessie—they were 
all fixed in an immense repose together. 

As she picked up her candle she couldn’t hear a sound in 
the room; it might have been empty of any human creature; 
that old woman sitting there in her shapeless and bilious 
immobility might have been a garmented image, a render¬ 
ing in art of passive contemplation. 

Mrs. Jesson went into her own room. She closed the 
door. Carefully she crossed to the dressing-table and put 
down the candle. For an instant she stood looking at its 
loose little golden plume. 

“No good can come of brooding,” she thought. “I shall 
make myself ill and then I shan’t be fit to help her. She 
may turn to me soon. I must be sensible, and have faith. 
I’m old—I ought to be able to control myself.” 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 185 

She lighted the gas, and then blew out the candle. She 
had a moment of rigid staring at the room. 

There Marie’s cradle had stood. Round and round that 
bed she ran in her vest after her bath every night. Under 
this bracket she sat putting her hair up for the first time 
—and it wouldn’t keep up—and she threw the comb at her 
mother. She was seventeen then, and she sobbed for half 
an hour afterwards with remorse. Passionate, wilful, bril¬ 
liant. 

Now she was old enough to marry. And could not have 
the man she wanted. 

The floor creaked under Mrs. Jesson’s heavy and rapid 
tread as she went to the window and drew the curtains. 
Then, with angular, rough movements, she began to un¬ 
dress. 


IV 

Dido and Hilda also went to bed early. But after Hilda’s 
first slight restlessness had subsided, and when her breath¬ 
ing sounded regular and quiet, Dido sat up in her bed. 

She drew her knees into a ridge and clasped this with 
her arms. She looked across her table with its books, 
candlestick, watch, and glass of lime-juice, at the decently 
covered mound which was Hilda. 

Slowly her eyes moved away to the window. She began 
to think. 

Had Hob ever made love to Marie? Did he really care 
for Marie now? Had she herself been as precipitate and 
unreasonable as Hilda? 


SECRET DRAMA 


186 

‘Tm not in love with him/’ she thought, “but I like 
him and if he means, by waiting about for me and going 
with me and looking like that at me, that he admires me and 
wants to see if he does more than admire me, then I think 
I’m willing to let him. I am willing. I could love him, if 
I let myself. But if he is a flirt and is behaving badly to 
Marie, then I could forget him and snub him without diffi¬ 
culty. It’s only just begun.” 

She frowned. She didn’t want to repulse him. 

She saw his face, his high, pale head, his body, all light¬ 
ness and vigor, his teeth, cutting sharply into a pipe, his 
long nose and chin with their look of neatly and cleanly 
severing the different knots of life’s problems and clearing a 
space for active, forceful existence. 

“I’m not mistaken. I’m not. He’s years younger than 
Marie. She looks awfully old the first thing in the morn¬ 
ing. But she’s charming, and he saw a lot of her and he 
admired her—she knocked him off his feet a little. She 
would. She does me—though I see through her. But a 
man wouldn’t. Not a man his age—he only looks a boy 
for all that calm and resolution. And he came down to see 
her in her own home, and then he saw Hilda and me and the 
contrast scattered him. He looked scattered that first night. 
The scales fell from his eyes!” 

Her little teeth were clenched in a silent laugh, and she 
hugged her knees. “I don’t believe he’d gone far with Marie. 
Marie would say he had. 'Behold my captive, my slave. 
A dear boy—he simply worships me.’ She said that. And 
that darling old woman believed her. I’m most awfully 
sorry for Mrs. Jesson.” 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 187 

She passed into a state of slow, untiring thought. First 
one and then another memory or intuition rose into prom¬ 
inence, so that she seemed to be drifting down a broad 
stream past strange and indefinite regions; she felt herself 
growing older; every moment of insight seemed to develop 
her mentally and morally; this brooding in the dim room, 
on the fringe of the soft sounds in the house, became a 
momentous thing, a period of growth, a ripening. There 
was something crucial about it. 

It was her first deliberate meditation on love and mar¬ 
riage. It seemed to her that all the solemnities of life 
presented themselves to her in turn—love, the ethics of our 
responsibility towards other humans, motherhood, virtue— 
she felt that they were all involved in this matter of Hob’s 
relations to herself and Marie. 

Knowing nothing of May Bessant’s irregular union with 
Louis Gosden and Hob’s knowledge of this through a be¬ 
trayal of confidence on the part of Mr. Billy Hammond, 
Louis’ cousin, she sought uncertainly for some shock ad¬ 
ministered by Marie to Hob’s moral sense. She felt pro¬ 
foundly that it was Hob’s possession of a moral sense which 
had turned him from Marie to herself. Had she known 
about May and Marie’s immoral views everything would 
have been clear to her, but she did not know; she only 
divined, with a feeling of positive clairvoyance, that 
something had withered Hob’s infatuation and driven him 
out into the luminous open spaces of her own orbit and 
Hilda’s. 

He may have admired Marie—he did, he did, she silently 
conceded—he followed Marie here, but she knew—she 


i88 


SECRET DRAMA 


harshly pressed the bones of her arms against ,-the bones 
of her legs to beat the knowledge into her very limbs— 
she knew that for him Marie had faded. Faded! She 
opened her eyes widely. 

“That’s just what she hasn’t done. She blazes—like a 
sunflower—or a furnace. He sees she’s coarse—and Hilda’s 
like a star. No one could show Marie up more than Hilda 
does. ... He is good. She’s offended him—perhaps by 
the way she treats her mother. He’s simple really, and 
he has all the prejudices and principles I have. He said this 
morning that the modern woman was putrid—and he said 
their clothes were ghastly and they only dressed for men. 
And he was awfully just and sensible about Ireland. He 
has opinions—and he’s quiet—he thinks. And he was per¬ 
fectly sweet about Miss Hammond. And he said Mrs. Jes- 
son was the nicest person he’d ever met.” 

She lifted her head and looked about her. She felt happy 
and yet uneasy. Her fluent reflections seemed suddenly, in 
the face of the silence, the dark, the existence, beyond the 
door, of the other rooms and their unknowable scenes, 
childish, futile, pathetically inadequate. Such a light little 
babble of words—and the immense incertitude remained. 
They couldn’t dispel it. She knew, absolutely, nothing. 
She believed she was right, but how slight were the things 
she relied on. Opinions as to the Irish difficulty, deference 
towards old women, indictments of modern femininity—she 
didn’t know him, it was impossible to know anybody, it 
was all darkness and silence. She didn’t like men. She 
wished he hadn’t come. If mother were here, a saner and 
wiser eye would be turned upon him. She, Dido, was a 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 189 

silly, girlish, sentimental little fool, expressing herself in 
schoolgirl phrases. 

She swung her long legs out of the bed; her night-dress 
swathed them closely. There was no movement from Hilda. 
She stood up on the cool, equal surface of the carpet. 

Most strange and secret the room lay about her. She 
had a moment of wonder at it and at her presence in its 
midst. It was as if one lived in a world of illusion for 
long, suave periods, and then for a moment veils were 
stripped away and the amazing reality was seen, only to 
be lost before understanding came, and the perception of 
order and aim under apparent chaos. 

She stared at the roller of Hilda’s body in the center of 
the narrow bed. That thing was Hilda. And Hilda was 
—what was Hilda? What were they all? Strange things; 
captives; working out a penal sentence. She felt she wanted 
to go over and prod that ridiculous, tidy roll which was 
Hilda. 

She curled her toes. Hilda would start up with a faint 
shriek; she could see the oval of Hilda’s amazed face 
and the round eyes fixed in it! 

She crossed quickly, smilingly, to the window. 

If the means of communication between herself and 
Hob were small, they were no smaller than those between 
herself and the women in the house. Expressions of opin¬ 
ion, half-confidences, glances, gestures—out of these one 
constructed the secrets of being. She knew all the women 
as well as it was permitted one to know these dim sharers 
of human existence. And she knew Hob; with every inter¬ 
view she would know him better. Besides, there were ac- 


SECRET DRAMA 


190 

tions to learn by; she had forgotten actions; Hob’s action 
in turning from Marie to her proved him good, congenial, 
clear-sighted. 

“Oh, what conceit!” 

But it wasn’t herself; it was the things she stood for; 
traditional morals, simplicity, modesty, a serious creed of 
duty—all the things mother so splendidly followed. 

“Odious little prig,” she rebuked herself. 

She leant against the window seat and gazed at the stars 
burning without a flicker in the clear sky. She felt the pres¬ 
ence of the three hills arched up, immovable, solid, in the 
fog; they seemed to cut off Rowe Green from the rest of 
Surrey, pressing it into Sussex. The whole soaked fog- 
embedded breadth of the Weald lay behind under the stare 
of the glossy sky and the amber flaming of the stars. 

How small the house seemed, cut up into segments in 
each of which vehement and strong currents swirled! 

Miss Wilson . . . 

Dido turned from the window. How could Miss Wilson 
be so mad? To imagine Jimmy Ainger was in love with 
her! Poor Jimmy! But the colossal, the astounding, stu¬ 
pidity of such a thought! Illusion! Delusion! Didn’t 
Miss Wilson see life as it was at all? One didn’t know 
which to give her—pity or contempt. 

Dido had a swift picture of Miss Wilson’s bedroom and 
Miss Wilson lying in bed, another inscrutable tight roller 
with a wild haze of hair at the top; she counted the thumps 
of Miss Wilson’s heart against the bed, discerned the tu¬ 
multuous eddy of thoughts, images, and dreams in Miss 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 


191 


Wilson’s mind. The sudden stark reality of Hob’s devel¬ 
oping love leapt at her as she analyzed the other women’s 
emotions. She hadn’t thought of it in detail before, in its 
physical expression. Did Miss Wilson dream of Jimmy’s 
kisses? 

Dido’s heart raced, she lifted her hands to her cheeks, 
mentally she fled leagues away from the realities of her 
position, over great empty cool tracks, pursued by Hob, 
awaited by Hob. Wonderful phenomenon. Hob was every¬ 
where; he hunted and he summoned; she fled from him, 
she groped towards him. 

At the top and at the bottom of her door light washed, 
soft and yellow. She heard the drag of slippers. Some 
one with a candle was walking up the passage. She heard 
a tapping on a door not far from her own. 

After a minute Miss Hammond’s voice weakly rose. 
“It’s only me—Bessie. I wondered if you were all right. 
So sorry to disturb you. Don’t get up.” 

A door opened; Mrs. Jesson’s voice. “How silly of 
you, Bessie. Why shouldn’t I be all right? Haven’t you 
been to bed?” 

“Yes, I have, but I couldn’t sleep. You’re all right, then? 
So sorry to make you get up. I was afraid you were wor¬ 
ried.” 

“No more worried than a mother expects to be. I shan’t 
be able to say anything to you, Bessie, if you get so upset. 
Wandering about on a damp night like this. Shall I come 
and sit with you till you go to sleep? Or would you like 
anything to eat?” 


192 


SECRET DRAMA 


“No, no, I’m quite all right. I’ll go back to bed now. 
You’re always doing something for me. I feel I want to 
do something for you. So kind and good.” 

Mrs. Jesson gave a vexed little laugh. “You go back to 
bed, Bessie, and be sensible. You’re sure you don’t want 
anything? Would you like some beef-tea?” 

“No, thank you. I’ve got my flask and bread-and-butter. 
Don’t be angry with me for disturbing you. Good night. 
I won’t come again.” 

“No, don’t, dear, because it’s so senseless. Go to sleep. 
I’m all right. There’s nothing for you to worry about at 
all.” 

“All right. I won’t. Good night. So sorry . . 

The door closed, the light wavered in a soft splotch over 
the ceiling, over the floor; darkness came down like a shut¬ 
ter. 

With a large gesture of tenderness Dido gathered the 
life of the house to herself. Dear, mysterious, lonely people! 
Where were they all being driven! If only she could slip 
into Hilda’s bed; if only mother were here to be brimmed 
with Dido’s impressions. 

The life of the house filtered through the door, spread 
over the room, wrapped her round, gently now, like the 
first shallow waves of a sea. It came from in front; but 
behind her, flowing in from the external world, was another 
force. The house; Hob; she watched their convergencies 
on her. 

All brought about by Marie’s coming. 

She got into bed. How deep the silence was! There 


NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 


193 

were no sounds in the house now. Was he thinking about 
her, or not? 

Invincible incertitude. Vaguely blissful, deeply compas¬ 
sionate, she waited for it to end. 


CONVERSATIONS 


i 

Next morning there was pastry to be made. Dido always 
made pastry on Saturday—apple tarts, jam tarts, jam 
fingers—and Miss Hyde roasted a duck as well as a joint 
that they might have a cold lunch on Sunday and be able, 
therefore, to go to church. 

At about ten o’clock Dido’s hands were covered with 
flour, her face was scarlet, there was a smear of flour on 
her hair where she had tucked it austerely behind her ears. 
Over an array of little tins, basins, sunken yellow bags of 
flour, and dishes of lard and butter, she talked of village 
matters with Hilda. Slight noises overhead were roused by 
Miss Hyde making the beds; loud noises on the stairs and 
afterwards in the drawing-room were signs that Marie’s bed¬ 
ding, removed from the verandah because of the heavy 
night-mists, was again descending. 

“It will be just as damp to-night,” Hilda commented. “I 
can’t imagine how she can do it.” 

Dido, rolling out the pastry, merely showed her teeth in 
a joyous little smile. 

She cut the pastry into shapes, set these in the tins, 
pushed them towards Hilda that Hilda might fill them with 

194 


CONVERSATIONS 


i95 

jam, and all the time she felt the tentative, uncertain re¬ 
turn of Hilda’s spirit back from distances; she caught the 
delicate language of Hilda’s long stares, calm withdrawals, 
and softer smiles. 

Dear Hilda, dear Hilda. She was coming back. Dido 
didn’t care to act. She had a sense of Hilda as wild and 
shy and swift. Her response must be as gentle, as almost 
imperceptible as Hilda’s invitation. They would unite 
again beautifully without word, probably without a glance; 
the most tremendous exigency of the position being per¬ 
fectly to act as though there had never been any severance 
at all. 

And under this absorption with Hilda’s spiritual move¬ 
ments there was the continual faint question, “Will he 
come to-day, or do anything significant?” 

“Is that the lot?” Hilda asked, from a kneeling position 
before the gas-stove. 

“Yes. I am hot. I’m going in the garden when I’ve 
washed my hands. Miss Hyde will be down by then.” 

“I wonder if they’ll ever have any bladder lard,” Hilda 
said patiently, her eyes dwelling on the table. “I don’t 
think that man deserves to do well. He never has any¬ 
thing.” 

Dido, on her way to the door, glanced back. Beamingly 
she observed Hilda’s fair, arched brows, her look of solemnly 
realizing the importance of lard in the scheme of things. 
Hilda, at that moment, wasn’t thinking of Hob nor of 
love, she was considering whether she should ask the carrier 
to bring her some bladder lard from Horsham. She had 
a lovely cloudless and simple look. Dido, perceiving that 


SECRET DRAMA 


196 

practical gaze, knew that Hilda’s vanity alone had been 
hurt; she didn’t love Hob. 

“Shall I ask Wallis to bring a pound from Horsham?” 
Hilda said. 

“I knew you were thinking that! I should. This man’s 
such a fearful scandalmonger too. He was telling me the 
most terrible stories about old Mrs. Matthews and her rela¬ 
tives the other morning. I’m sure they can’t have been 
true. I won’t be a minute. See they don’t burn, there’s 
an angel. I’ll send Miss Hyde down at once.” 

She ran up the warm staircase. 

“She doesn’t love him. I am so glad. It was only pique 
—as I thought. Everything will soon be the same again.” 

She went merrily into the bathroom. 

A little later she walked up the garden with Hilda. 

When they came in view of the verandah a sonorous 
shout arrested them. They turned to see Marie on her 
bed, waving a spoon in invitation. 

“Come and have some tea,” she cried. 

They joined her. 

“I’ve just washed my head,” she said. “Sit down. Do 
have a spot of tea.” 

Dido gave her a hard, bright little glance. “Inveterate 
tea-drinker! ” she exclaimed, opening a camp-chair. “I’m too 
hot. I’ve been cooking.” 

“How beautifully domestic of you!” Marie drank some 
tea. Her hair hung in wet tails over her wrists. Her cheeks 
looked fresh and damp but without shapeliness, without 
delicacy. Her nose seemed to overhang her mouth. There 
was a peculiar enigmatical smile in her eyes. 


CONVERSATIONS 


197 


She put down her cup and, still smiling but subtly hostile 
and contemptuous, gazed at Dido. “Perhaps you feel fitted 
for a domestic life?” she suggested. “Something very re¬ 
spectable and worthy—ultilitarian.” She clasped her hands 
and laughed with that same look of derision, almost of lib¬ 
ertinism. 

“How hopelessly bourgeois it sounds!” Dido exclaimed, 
gleefully smiling back. “I’m ashamed of my proficiency. I 
suppose I ought to be going about in tango trousers instead 
of an apron. I do wear an apron! Isn’t it awful?” 

Marie did not answer. She looked; slowly, dreamily she 
withdrew her look and directed it at the teapot. She sug¬ 
gested an amused contemplation of Dido’s moral and men¬ 
tal aspects. From some enlightened, emancipated sphere 
she tolerantly and with a shrug looked down on Dido. 

Hilda, simpering a little in an indeterminate state between 
the conclusion of her last laugh and readiness for her next, 
gazed from one to the other. Her lips, glued evenly together, 
promised a contented silence. Her large eyes became grad¬ 
ually a little shrewd and sharp. 

“I dislike cooking,” Marie continued. “If I have to do 
any I make it endurable by thinking hard all the time of 
something else—what a splendid time I had in the Pyrenees 
or in America, or in recalling some of my experiences with 
May—when we rambled round the Docks at midnight, for 
instance, with a private detective and a subaltern we knew. 
Lovely.” 

She turned quickly. “What do you think of that book 
on Spiritualism?” she demanded. 

“Oh, it made me laugh,” Dido said, with a delighted air 


SECRET DRAMA 


198 

of retrospection. “Hilda and I shouted over the part where 
the son says he doesn’t get such good pastry in heaven as 
his mother made! We found it full of unconscious humor. 
I must return it to you.” 

“Hmm.” Marie did not laugh. She spoke in a grave, 
rather distant manner. “Still, that’s only due to the pre¬ 
conceived idea. Your finding it funny, I mean. You don’t 
believe in a concrete heaven and your imagination can’t ap¬ 
parently be broadened.” She laughed, her face forming 
into thick folds. “I was like you once, but I’ve always 
approached things with an open mind, and I believe in 
spiritualism. I’m psychic. I’ve been told that I’ve strong 
mediumistic powers—I’m an uncontrolled medium. I could 
be in a lunatic asylum in six months if I let myself go.” 
She resonantly laughed, swaying on the bed, chill, glitter¬ 
ing drops swinging off from the tips of her hair. “I’ve 
known for years that I could, but I’ve tremendous self- 
control. I strike you as sane, don’t I? You wouldn’t ex¬ 
pect me to be psychic, would you?” 

“Awfully sane,” Dido said. There was a faint throaty 
sound from Hilda. They both looked steadily at Marie. 
Hilda, under her amazement, had an intelligent air; Dido’s 
lips curled upwards at the corners; her eyes were brilliantly 
alert. She inwardly laughed over this bold, angered as¬ 
sertion of personality. Marie’s endeavor was so palpable. 
She was asserting her reality. Humiliated by Hob, she 
strove to exalt herself into a flaming and original force. 
She wanted to be seen as she saw herself, impressive, 
masterful, influential. She felt herself fading out of sight 
through her failure to maintain supremacy in the group. 


CONVERSATIONS 199 

She saw Dido turned from her ; unheeding, perhaps abso¬ 
lutely forgetful. She was outdistanced, disregarded, real 
only to herself. Insupportable position for Marie so desir¬ 
ous of radiant prominence, with all hearts impressed and 
all eyes held! 

She had, somehow, to drag them back to a consideration, 
an acknowledgment, of her potency, her superb presence, se¬ 
ductive and irresistible, in their midst. 

“I think I seem a very well-balanced person,” she asserted, 
“so perhaps my experiences will have some weight with you. 
I should never dream of becoming a professional medium. 
You see, I’m uncontrolled. It wouldn’t be safe. I’ve been 
warned by a spiritualistic friend not to be tempted, even 
though huge sums of money were offered me. They say 
my powers are extraordinary. This is in confidence.” She 
glanced round into the drawing-room. “There’s no one 
about, is there? I get no sympathy from my own family. 
Mother doesn’t understand me. She’s the most practical and 
unimaginative person alive. If I told her devils had been 
fighting all night to keep my soul from returning to my 
body she’d say, ‘Have a cup of tea, dear. You’re liverish.’ 
I was so obliged to you for the discreet way you removed 
the book that morning she stole upon us. She’d be horrified 
if she saw it. I had to smuggle it carefully into the house. 
I have to keep all my spiritual adventures to myself. I’ve 
had some dreadful hours. You see—I’m not a Christian. 
I’m an absolute pagan in the way I turn to Nature—or a 
pantheist. I believe in a Supreme Being, but I consider 
Christianity merely one form of a universal religion. And 
I believe that devils try to obtain possession of us. I’m 



200 


SECRET DRAMA 


sure they do. There’s one after me—a mulatto. I’ve never 
met a mulatto in the flesh, but night after night this man 
has appeared to me when I’ve been out of my body.” 

On her swift, low monologue Hilda’s voice broke, squeaky, 
and suggestive of impending mental collapse. “Out of 
your body!” Hilda exclaimed. “What in the world is that?” 

Dido pressed Hilda’s foot with hers. The pressure was 
instantly returned. Dido had a momentary perception of 
Hilda’s perfect re-establishment by her side. Hilda was at 
hand again, responsive to all calls, by the relevance of her 
responses disclosing luminous moments of attention to Dido’s 
feelings. 

“Oh, something very unpleasant,” Marie replied laugh¬ 
ing. “It’s the spirits trying to get you over to the other 
side. Spiritualists always speak of the Other Side, you 
know, not heaven. This mulatto wants me. We have 
terrific struggles. He was bending over me the other night, 
and I grabbed the pillow and simply threw it at him with a 
shriek of ‘Damn you!’ I found myself standing out on 
the path there. It sounds mad.” 

Her burst of laughter was followed by a howl from the 
other side of the hedge. 

“It’s Jimmy and Mr. Ramsay,” Dido said. 

Marie turned unfathomable eyes towards the hedge. 

“Oh yes. . . . I’m most fearfully psychic. And I have 
extraordinary telepathic powers too. I’ll tell you about 
them another time.” 

She sprang off the bed and, swinging her round hips, 
throwing back her hair with a fine arrogance, walked to¬ 
wards the hedge. 


CONVERSATIONS 


201 


The stiff hair and round eyes of Jimmy, and Hob’s head 
and shoulders were visible above it. Hob was looking into 
the verandah. 

“I don’t like her,” Hilda whispered. “She doesn’t like 
you either. She was showing off. I can’t imagine any one 
believing such rubbish. I think it’s awfully silly. And it’s 
really rude to talk so much about herself. I wish you’d 
snub her, Dido.” 

Dido’s heart was throbbing. She turned her eyes towards 
Hilda, but she lifted them no higher than Hilda’s small 
rather hollow throat. 

Then with an only just perceptible effort Hilda added: 

“But it’s because she’s jealous of you that she talks like 
that. You needn’t do anything. She’s furious about Mr. 
Ramsay. I should have hated him to have her.” 

Eloquently they gazed at each other. Hilda’s face had 
grown a little loose and damp; she had, with her girlish, 
narrow figure, the faint blue marks under her eyes, her pure 
and pale lips, the look of something set apart, cloistered, 
a pathetic and yet desirable look. In her expression of 
unfulfilment she was beautiful. The shadow of a sterile 
but exquisite middle-age seemed to touch her subtly. 

Dido’s nostrils dilated. She lifted her burning eyes to 
Hilda and then at once averted them. She was not think¬ 
ing. She had only a sense of light; wide vistas of light 
stretched round her, permanent, richer than the light of day. 

IT 

Marie was returning with the two men. Hob’s eyes were 


202 


SECRET DRAMA 


lowered. Jimmy appeared excited. He moved his short 
legs jerkily, smoothed the back of his head, cast wooden 
glances round him, folded his under lip over his upper in 
a kind of desperate determination. 

He looked at the cousins as at two more pieces thrust 
upon the unconscionable litter of the garden. He had, quite 
palpably, arrived at that outlook: Marie—and a jumble o\ 
things. 

Hob and Dido glanced at each other. They, then, imme¬ 
diately turned to Jimmy and Marie. 

“Thank you. I will,” Jimmy said, gazing at the teapot. 

“You won’t,” Marie retorted. “There isn’t a spot left.” 

She gave Hob a veiled, absent look. 

Jimmy moved about, staring at them all, talking, but 
obviously preoccupied. “That—that—that jellowf ’—he in¬ 
dicated Hob—“has been rolling me up on the subject of 
the British working-man. Confound it. What’s the British 
working-man to me that I should turn my fine intellect to his 
defense? Simply because I expressed a reasonable sympathy 
with the miners.” 

“What did he say?” Marie asked. 

“Oh, a lot of nasty hard technical stuff.” Jimmy grimaced 
horribly. “Dull! Dull! A most uninteresting fellow.” 

Hilda was laughing. Marie, her eyes half closed, still 
idly scrutinized Hob. 

Hob’s gaze, pale and diffuse like moonlight, wandered 
towards Dido. There was an angularity about his attitude; 
he seemed scarcely more natural than Jimmy. 

“The nucleus of the matter,” he said, “was my diffident 
suggestion that the working-classes havent’ any sense of the 


CONVERSATIONS 


203 


influence of environment. That is to say, they can’t grasp 
the fact, when they’re slating the aristocracy, that if they 
were in the aristocrat’s place they would do exactly the 
same thing. It’s all a matter of training and circumstance 
—our outlook is. We’re the creatures of our conditions. 
I’ve a sort of theory that accretions of all kinds settle on 
our surfaces. In our contacts with each other and our con¬ 
ditions, I mean. I imagine I’m talking awful rot and wan¬ 
dering from the point, but it’s wobbling about in my head— 
the notion that we gather up all sorts of things from our 
environment. That’s why there are so many lunatics about 
now—they’re amassing spooks and mud and complexes. 
Things settle on them—beastly things . . 

“Oh, ain’t ’e ’orrid,” Jimmy cried. “Like flies on a 
corpse. Disgusting simile.” 

“I apologize.” Hob bowed to them all. “I now bring 
round the hat for the pennies.” 

“We’ve lost the British working-man completely,” Dido 
said. 

Hob spun round to her. “He was never really in it. And 
anyhow, I don’t claim coherence. I’m like the novelists— 
J succeed with my analysis, but fail in my synthesis. . . . 
But, as a matter of fact, I’ve simply been thinking about 
people and temperamental differences; thinking that, after 
all, convention isn’t such a bad thing.” 

There was silence. All avoided looking at each other; 
no one moved. But Dido’s feeling of taking irrevocable 
steps into new and perilous realms was intense. How 
swiftly and without swerve she and Hob traveled towards 
each other. The implications of his work were like torches 


204 


SECRET DRAMA 


held aloft, steady, bright, in the shadowy places wherein 
she moved. With her eyes on them she trod firmly, upheld, 
reassured. She saw him by their light; she knew him; she 
had no fear of him. “I see Marie accumulating rubbish, if 
not worse; disfiguring herself with it. I see you living by 
laws and beautiful traditions, sane, fresh, simple.” That 
was what he said to her. 

Her eyelids almost covered her eyes. Her breath came 
in short little pants. She felt as though she had paused 
in her swift rush to him and now hung folded and throbbing, 
awaiting his descent on her. It was as if she awaited dis¬ 
solution so profoundly she figured her union with him as a 
loss of separate personality, a kind of mystic diffusion of 
her spirit through his, making them for ever indivisible. 

Bitter and chagrined Marie’s voice sounded. “Oh, I 

? 

don’t agree with you at all. I agree with Jimmy. You’re 
getting deplorably dull. If you go on like this you’ll be too 
uninteresting to be borne. Orthodox things are terrible, I 
think. You’re merely being bamboozled by superficialities. 
Shams! Conventional morality! It’s the most ghastly 
thing there is. Mid-Victorian hypocrisy! You’re a pathe¬ 
tic spectacle, Hob.” 

She laughed. In a firm, authoritative voice she added, 
“How do you like your diggings?” 

Hob accepted the change of subject. “I’m charmed. 
The daughter told me all about bee-keeping yesterday, 
and concluded with a recital of 'How doth the little busy 
bee 

Marie looked at Dido. “What a pity you aren’t brainy, 
Miss Baird!” she said. “With all your leisure you could 


CONVERSATIONS 


205 

write a novel. I’m sure our villagers would afford splendid 
copy.” 

It was Hilda who retaliated, without finesse, in a sharp, 
slightly trembling voice. “I wonder you don’t do one your¬ 
self, as you can do so many things.” 

Marie opened her glistening eyes. She was surprised, and, 
for the instant, arrested. 

“Yes, why don’t you?” Hob took up the suggestion. 
“Write your experiences and Miss Bessant’s. This week’s 
best seller ‘My Life,’ by M. Jesson.” 

He smiled with his lips, keeping his large, frigid eyes 
on Marie. 

They were now all angered. They scarcely troubled to 
conceal their anger. The silence was tense with their emo¬ 
tions. 

Then Marie turned away, seeming to disengage herself 
from crudities, from vulgarities. 

“Come and pick apples for me, Jimmy,” she said, not even 
looking at him in the fine certitude of his obedience. 

Slowly, with decisive movements which showed the shape 
of her limbs under her thin dress, shaking her flat, moist 
head, she walked up the path. She turned her head from 
side to side, scrutinizing the flowers with a tranquil and 
happy air. 

Jimmy followed. 

With their departure a change came over Hob. He ceased 
to be composed and explanatory. He leant against one of 
the verandah supports and looked with a bright fixity at the 
ground. 

“Have you been reading up psychic-analysis?” Dido 


206 SECRET DRAMA 

asked. “You said ‘complexes’ with an air of experiences.” 

“Reviews/’ Hob explained, “I’ve been studying the re¬ 
views on the subject. I do like to seem well-informed.” 

He looked softly and timidly at her. 

She laughed. “Is it much of a strain? You needn’t 
keep it up if it is. Hilda and I have been cooking, so we’re 
feeling very mundane. We haven’t cleared our heads of so 
much lard to so much flour yet.” 

“These domestic troubles,” he murmured, with a sym¬ 
pathetic and initiated air. “I’m sorry for you.” 

“There’s some flour on your hair now, Dido,” Hilda 
said. 

They all laughed. Hob and Dido looked at each other. 

Hilda’s good, clear gaze rested on them. She stood up. 

“I must go and wait at the gate for the carrier,” she said. 
“Shall I ask him to get half a pound or a pound?” 

“Half a pound.” Dido explained to Hob the value of the 
carrier. 

“Horsham,” Hob repeated. “I’ve never been there. And 
this fellow takes passengers? How jolly to go. Will you 
take this little boy to Horsham, Miss Baird? If you’ve 
made no other arrangements for to-day.” 

He waited for her answer, his gaze downcast, his lips 
anxiously smiling. 

Dido laughed, showing her little clenched teeth. In her 
joy she looked neither at him nor at Hilda. She sat, with¬ 
out answering, tender and inscrutable. 

“Will you?” Hob said again, his face growing dark with 
uneasiness. 

Dido stood up. She gave him her gleaming, calm smile. 


CONVERSATIONS 207 

“It will be awfully jolly,” she said. “He has a beau¬ 
tiful car—pneumatic tires, you know.” 

“Perhaps Mr. Ramsay will stand at the gate and look 
for him while you change,” Hilda suggested. 

There were joyous instructions, acceptances, Hob’s de¬ 
parture. Then Hilda and Dido were alone. From the 
other end of the garden Marie watched them. 

Appealingly Dido looked at Hilda. 

Hilda’s mild gaze did not waver. “I think he’s awfully 
nice,” Hilda said—“nice enough even for you, Dido. I told 
you he was certain to admire you.” 

Dido stared at a pearl button on Hilda’s blouse. She 
noticed the straightness of Hilda’s hips. She saw Hilda 
through bright visions of Hob—his head, his smile, his 
long cheeks. These visions, circumscribing her, seemed 
to confine her to a strange enchanted zone of solitude with 
Hob. Hilda stood outside it. Hilda—outside! Hilda . 

Vehemently she broke through that insidious barrier of 
memory. With an odd little sound she threw her arms 
round Hilda’s waist, pressing her cheek on Hilda’s arched 
small head. 

A moment later she released Hilda. Mistily they looked 
at each other. Then silent, taking swift, almost manly 
strides, they went into the house. 


CHAPTER VII 


ON HIRST HILL 

i 

Marie went out to dinner that night. 

The house, after she had gone, seemed very quiet. Mrs. 
Jesson had dinner early and then went into the garden. 

Seeing Hilda sitting alone, crocheting, she walked over 
to her. 

“You’re alone to-night,” she said, smiling. 

“Yes. My cousin’s gone to Horsham with Mr. Ramsay, 
in the carrier’s car. I dare say they’ll be back soon.” 

Silently Mrs. Jesson’s brain repeated this information. 
She looked round her vaguely. Then she shivered a little. 
An inaudible sigh came through her parted lips. She had 
a moment of moral prostration before the inexorable de¬ 
crees of destiny. Dido had gone with Hob. Her despair¬ 
ing, oblique appeal to Dido had failed. 

She put out her hand and grasped an apple-bough near 
her. 

Presently she said: “Oh, yes. Marie’s gone out to dinner. 
The house seems very quiet.” 

“And she’s going to Hirst Hill afterwards, isn’t she?” 
Hilda said. 

“Eh?” Mrs. Jesson brought out loudly. 

“Isn’t she going to Plirst Hill? I heard her making 
the arrangement with Mr. Ainger. He said he and Mr. 

208 


ON HIRST HILL 


209 


Lucas would take her. I thought it was for to-night. But 
if she didn’t tell you . . 

Hilda’s voice thinned away. 

“Mr. Ainger and Mr. Lucas,” Mrs. Jesson echoed. “She 
said nothing about it to me.” 

Hilda gazed amiably at her. After a long, blind stare at 
Hilda she turned and went towards the house. 

She looked straight at its windows, but she did not see 
them. Her dress caught on trailing pieces of rose, and she 
jerked it free with a fierce unconscious movement. She 
was shaken by anger and by dread. She moved with her 
gaze fixed on appalling possibilities. Before she had taken 
many irregular and stumbling steps thoughts gathered in 
her mind. 

“I don’t like her going with those men. Why didn’t she 
tell me she was going? It gets dark early now. I wish 
she hadn’t gone.” 

She halted and looked round her. Her fingers plucked at 
her palms. 

“I don’t like Jimmy,” she said aloud. “I don’t like her 
being with those men up there. . . . She never tells me 
what she’s going to do. She ought to tell me.” 

Her stare at the swarthy angle of the Green visible 
across the hedge became incredulous. To her her position 
seemed terrible. She couldn’t believe in its reality. Her re¬ 
jection by Marie was, in its completeness, in its finality, 
inhuman. For one dark moment, wherein she descended 
into the profound abyss of utter desolation, she saw Marie 
as monstrous in her inflexible repudiation of all her mother’s 
claims to intimacy, to obedience, to confidence. 


210 


SECRET DRAMA 


“I don’t know how she can treat me so/’ she said, still 
uttering her words aloud. “She’s—hard—and selfish. . . 

She turned and moved rapidly on, screwing up her eyes, 
and then opening them wide again in extreme nervous agi¬ 
tation. 

“I dare say I’m hard. I expect too much. I’m selfish. 
I want her all for myself. I’m jealous of every one she goes 
•with. I make all my unhappiness through my own jealous 
—unreasonable—love. I’m unreasonable. . . . But I 
don’t like her going with those men. I don’t want her to 
have anything to do with Jimmy. He’s too old—and he’s 
worldly. I don’t know how much dirt he’s been through. 
He’s always with Tommy.” 

Again she stopped. Her little somber eyes slid round in a 
hopeless and bewildered stare. She became quite rigid 
with fear. She gazed at a mental picture of Marie deliber¬ 
ately, through suffering and disappointment, abandoning 
herself to this new morality of free love, this morality which 
made natural instinct the only law, this dry materialism and 
skepticism. 

Involuntarily she raised her hands, the veined, thick fin¬ 
gers extended, curled, as though she would grasp Marie, 
holding her, preserving her, in an unmovable embrace. 

She glared round at the dim golden films of sunlight 
wherein the garden, the Green, the faint hills, lay odorous 
and still. Physically Marie was beyond her reach. Spirit¬ 
ually she was almost lost sight of, moving away, and with 
every withdrawing movement, growing more diminutive, 
more bafflingly immobile and without sound. 

Instantly this perception was succeeded by another which 


ON HIRST HILL 


211 


falsified it, which brought Mrs. Jesson’s head up with a 
look of grand and unfailing omniscience. Marie would never 
pass beyond the radius of her mother’s vision. There was 
no realm of darkness, strangeness, and corruption which she 
might enter but she would be visible to her mother, followed 
unerringly, small, far-off, detached, but always known, al¬ 
ways transparent, always audible. Why did she say she 
didn’t understand Marie? There was nothing in Marie’s 
nature that was hidden from her. Marie was her child. 
Only by death could Marie escape her. Living, her farthest 
flights could not obscure nor hide her. The music of her 
actions, the feverish complexity of her emotions, her pas¬ 
sage through day and through night—all would be known 
to her mother. Nothing could attenuate the power of that 
sublime and tragical vision. 

She moved slowly across the lawn. She felt numbed and 
bowed down by apprehension. Marie was suffering; she 
loved Hob and she had seen him going off with Miss Baird; 
she knew that her love was hopeless, and in her pain— 
she was so impulsive, so rebellious—she agreed to Jimmy’s 
suggestion. 

“She don’t want to have time to think. She’ll move all 
the time, doing anything that occurs to her so that she’ll 
forget. She’s desperate. I wish—when she’s unhappy— 
when she’s suffered any disappointment—she’d come to me. 
But she never has. I know she never will. She’ll go to 
anybody but me, because she thinks I’m a drag on her— 
she’s afraid I shall try to direct her, and she wants to go 
her own way. . . . Jimmy loves her. But she mustn’t have 
him. I couldn’t bear her to have him.” 


212 


SECRET DRAMA 


She stepped on to the verandah, and without knowing 
what she was doing, smoothed the traveling-rug which cov¬ 
ered Marie’s bed, touched the box of chocolates on the 
table, picked up an apple core which lay beside the box 
and threw it into a clump of phlox. Then she stood still, 
her hands hanging at her sides, her eyes fixed on the irradi¬ 
ated gauzes of light woven by the sun across the damp air. 

“Jimmy isn’t good enough for her. If I went round to 
Mrs. Bennett’s . . . No, I mustn’t do that. She’d be 
angry at my intervention. I couldn’t say anything before 
Mrs. Bennett. They’ll go across the fields. If I met them 
I could go with them. She’d be angry, but ... I don’t like 
her being alone with those men. I can’t rest here. If she 
has Jimmy it will break my heart.” 

She turned towards the drawing-room. Marie would 
never forgive her if she intervened. She saw herself ap¬ 
proaching the group; Marie’s severe, sparkling glance sank 
down into her, mystically wounding her; she saw Jimmy’s 
large, meaningless brow, upright hair, and wide nostrils, 
his short, fat legs and wooden little movements; she saw 
Tommy’s sleek oval head, and peering glances; and, bulg¬ 
ing above the three figures, the black hill, the rusty sky. 
She couldn’t stop here; she disliked, she distrusted those 
men. She would never have had Tommy in the house only 
every one else did; one had to overlook so much nowadays. 
There wasn’t, nevertheless, a mother at Rowe Green who 
would like her daughter to be out with Tommy at twilight 
in solitary places. And Jimmy’s presence was no comfort. 
That his intentions were honorable made him scarcely less 
to be dreaded. 


ON HIRST HILL 


213 


“He isn’t clever; he’s only a farmer; he—he—there’s 
nothing fine about him. She ought to have some one good 
and fine—an important man. I didn’t mind Mr. Ramsay 
not being a genius, because I liked him for his character so. 
But Jimmy isn’t anything you can respect; he hasn’t any 
personality. ... I can’t sit here and let him try and win 
her. I’m afraid what she’ll do while she’s like this; reck¬ 
less, and suffering. . . . She’ll be angry. . . . Shall 
I do more harm than good? How weak we are! We have 
to move in darkness. If I could only see a step ahead. 
‘I do not ask to see the distant scene, one step enough for 
me.’ ” 

She went into the drawing-room. Her mouth was dry 
and her eyelids felt hot and smarting. A vast solitude 
seemed to surround her, and she could discern a signal of 
help, a promise of succor. The room, the house, the gleam¬ 
ing land appeared to affirm their irresponsibility with an 
ironic emphasis. A murmur of voices in the kitchen sounded 
in another world. In the dining-room there was a faint 
chink of china: Bessie was having a cup of tea. She had a 
sudden passionate impulse to go to Bessie. 

She seemed to see Bessie disengaging herself from her 
haunted and abnormal realm and incompetently shrinking 
from the immortal terrors which preyed upon Mrs. Jesson. 

Quickly she opened the door and went upstairs to her 
bedroom. 


n 

She gazed round it with a stupid look. Boots—she 

must change her house shoes. 


214 


SECRET DRAMA 


She did so, pulling at the laces with impatience and irri¬ 
tation. Then she stood up. She couldn’t trouble to change 
her dress. She’d wear her silk coat. It didn’t matter if 
it wasn’t suitable—no one would look at an old woman. 

She slipped the black silk coat over her gray dress. 
Without a glance at the glass, she settled on her head a 
large black silk sailor hat encircled with a gray feather. 
Then she picked up gloves and went out. 

In the hall she took an umbrella—the first she saw— 
from the tubular blue stand. Her silk skirts swishing, 
the laces of her boots tapping the boots with a sharp, small 
noise, she emerged into the road and vigorously, with angu¬ 
lar, abrupt movements, using the umbrella as a stick, walked 
down the Coltham road. 

It was now half-past seven. Mrs. Bennett usually 
had dinner at half-past six. Marie had, possibly, left at 
seven; but it was also possible that she had not yet 
started. 

There was no sun in the lane nor on this part of the 
Green. The trodden grass-track she followed was spongy 
and black; the clumps of reeds stood up stiff and morose 
amid the soft, moist diffusion of tall feathery grass-heads. 
On her left, embedded in dark trees marked here and there 
with a blue slat of sky, amid straying rank scents of earth 
and weed and pool, was the little Norman church; on her 
right, above a wet smother of grass, braken, and blackberries 
hung with rags of dead leaves and stems, the pines stood 
molded in swart and slender grace. Before her the yellow 
road wound, casting a sickly light. 

She walked quickly. She was without thought, but con- 


ON HIRST HILL 


215 


scious of formless, moody shapes which flitted across the 
darkness of her mind. She looked at the few people she met, 
with a concentrated expression, endeavoring to realize their 
reality, to make of them something more than moving shad¬ 
ows amid the unmoving presences of the land. She became, 
gradually, more perceptive. Her glance unconsciously ap¬ 
pealed and questioned. Faces advanced softly to her with 
mystery and yet with a touching candor, and, frowning 
in her earnestness, she searched veiled, unfathomable eyes, 
hollow cheeks, the bitter or sarcastic or patient curves of 
lip. 

There was no reticence in her gaze. She looked at them 
with a kind simplicity and they looked back at her flowing 
coat, her elaborate dress, her hat, which had fallen a little 
to the back of her head, her big boots, glistening with mois¬ 
ture from the grass. 

She wondered about these people. She would have liked 
to speak to them. It was the first walk she had taken 
since her return, and despite her timid and perturbed 
mood she enjoyed the sweet sense of companionship, of 
release from that feeling of singularity in suffering, until 
she remembered how inaccessible they were, these human 
beings who passed within reach of her hand. 

“We mustn’t do anything that’s kind and homely and 
natural,” she reflected. “There’s always some social con¬ 
vention to be remembered. They’re not in my class, or if 
they are it’s not good form to talk about personal things; 
there’s always something to stop any—any communication 
with our fellow-creatures. Besides the barriers we can feel 
ourselves. I’ve lived here thirty years and I’ve no real 


2 l6 


SECRET DRAMA 


friend, no one I can talk to. English people are so stiff. 
I think the Scotch are more like Americans.” 

When she crossed the little bridge, catching between 
the dipping boughs and nooks of thick, wet undergrowth, 
the brown, polished glimmer of water, shallow, passed over 
by singing insects, breathing out a mildewed and death-like 
smell, she ceased to meet people; the lane went, narrow¬ 
ing and empty, before her, fields sweeping off from it and 
swelling up to a clear rolled edge along the luminous and 
filmy sky. 

She passed a farm and then for some way high hedges 
and firs concealed the view. Young oak leaves, haggard 
with blight, spotted the tops of the hedges, and from the 
sides of ditches glossy leaves came out, wanly glimmering 
like eyes. 

Several times she stopped and looked round, but there 
were no figures on the road. She reached the stile at last 
and, after a troublous glance backward at that empty per¬ 
spective, got over it and went forward into the furrowed, 
oozing, and yielding muddiness of the field. 

She lifted her skirts high above her boots. 

“I hope she brought a change of shoes. They would go 
this way, I suppose, not by the road.” 

In her perplexity she stopped. Before her the field, fawn- 
colored with stubble, slanted down to a hedgerow. Beyond 
it and the succeeding wedges of grassland, fallowland, and 
potatoes, Hirst Hill brooded, one sleek side showing, and 
a shaggy mane. No human moved on the flats nor on 
that dark hump thinly veiled in a yellow fog of sunlight. 
She heard no sound but the stealthy sucking of the earth 


ON HIRST HILL 


217 


at the water she squeezed out with her boots; the strong, 
sodden earth puffed towards her its tart, its resinous, its 
sickly scents with the suggestion of a rotting and depopu¬ 
lated world. 

A feeling of shame oppressed her. There seemed in her 
action something melodramatic and crude. She felt terribly 
that when she marched upon Marie, grotesque in her finery, 
her muddy boots, her heat, and agitation, Marie would be 
furious. She asked herself what she would say to explain 
her intrusion, and her brain settled into a stupor at the 
mere thought of speaking under the brilliant, fixed regard 
of Marie’s eyes. She voicelessly declared that she could 
not go on; she was becoming quite reasonless and wild with 
her love and her terrors; she trembled with fright, think¬ 
ing that Marie might come up to the stile from the road 
and discover her here. It seemed to her that she would 
not be able to bear Marie’s amazement, the courteous dis¬ 
cretion of the men. She made an abrupt, angry gesture, 
repelling the thought that they should gaze upon her pas¬ 
sion, should criticize the manner in which she expressed that 
passion. 

“I oughtn’t to have come. She’ll be so angry, I’d better 
go back. I must remember she isn’t a child that I can 
follow and—and dominate. Why can’t I trust her? She 
says I don’t trust her.” 

She stared at those soft scoops of field, holding the light 
and the mist between the severe rounded strokes of the 
woodlands and the masses of the three hills. She found 
herself unable to move. She dared not go forward; she 
could not go back. She felt irritated by her invidious posi- 


2l8 


SECRET DRAMA 


tion. She resented something without knowing what it 
was. she resented: Marie’s attitude towards her, the tyranny 
of her love for Marie, or the rigors of human life. 

Then diminutive amid the large forms of nature, two 
forms moved out beyond one of the distant hedgerows; 

tiny, sharp-, pliant things, they seemed to glide over the 
ribbed brown field. 

They* were the figures of a woman and a man, and she 
knew beyond doubt that the woman was Marie; the man 
she could not recognize. But the small hat and the pale 
dress, the firm, manly movements with the walking-stick— 
that was. Marie. 

She no longer hesitated. She forgot the aspects and the 
effects of her action. She rapidly continued to cross the 
field, taking long strides, her skirt gathered up in a bunch 
in one hand, the umbrella- striking against stones, sinking 
into the thick ruts, swinging forward and descending with¬ 
out a tremor, her eyes, full of rage, fixed on the masculine 
figure which opened out and grew straight again in odd, 
futile gesticulation. 

She did not think what she would say when she reached 
them; she did not consider how far from them she was, 
nor how, long before she came near them, they, if they 
turned, would see and recognize her. She thought of noth¬ 
ing; she was driven on by powers stronger than reason, 
or pride, or fear for self—the power of her hatred of that un¬ 
named man; of her unconquerable belief in the approach 
of some climax, ruinous and irremediable, which her pres¬ 
ence might not avert, but which her absence would precip¬ 
itate. 


ON HIRST HILL 


219 


hi 

It was two miles to the top of Hirst Hill. Marie and her 
companion were walking quickly, and when Mrs. Jesson came 
out into the last of the fields they were ascending the hill¬ 
side, their look of futility, of unconscious sadness, empha¬ 
sized now as they toiled up the dark, wild spaces of burnt 
gorse and heather, over deep mats of needles and mildewed 
cones, past solitary pines jutting up with a swarthy and torn 
air, the half-moon of the Weald below «and the paling flat 
vacuity of the sky above. 

The sun was dulling now as it dropped into the fogs, 
but the rays from its upper half flushed Brend Hill and 
edged the pines above Hirstwood with a semblance of 
golden fur. The deep quietude enveloped her; all things 
reposed; only those two figures moved on the whole visible 
expanse between sky and sky. 

A feeling of despair overcame her. Again she felt how 
terrible her position was; she trembled as though she had 
been mortally injured; she suffered from a vague sensa¬ 
tion of shame and indignity. She did not want any one to 
pass and see her here, but her anger and pain sprang from 
no perception of her dramatic aspect in muddy boots, silk 
clothes, and disarranged hat; she had no thought of her 
physical state; it was in her state as mother alone that she 
perceived herself. She was careless of her appearance as a 
woman; she would, without thought, subject that appear¬ 
ance to all kinds of trials and disasters, but as a mother 
she was invested with a sublime dignity, and, tramping over 
the strip of glass beside the lumps of rich glistening earth, 


220 


SECRET DRAMA 


gazing at those figures, awaiting stoically the moment of im¬ 
pact, of storm, she bent morally before an impious affront, 
she shuddered with her whole body, seeing herself discarded, 
disdained, abused. 

The moment of recognition came at last. Marie stopped 
and turned to gaze at the South Downs, pointing with her 
stick to Chanctonbury Ring, to Shoreham Gap, moving the 
stick along, and then lowering it and bending her gaze on 
the Weald, on Rowe Green pond, on the little precise angles 
of tilled land. She became suddenly still and intent. 

Involuntarily Mrs. Jesson stopped. She lifted her head 
as if courageously and simply baring herself to that steady, 
far-off stare. She forgot the distance between them and 
smiled with stiff, shapeless lip. Her heart began to ham¬ 
mer against her side, a film passed over her eyes. She 
wished she hadn’t come; she saw this impetuous and absurd 
action from Marie’s standpoint and condemned herself 
without pity. She waited as if lightning, as if devastating 
forces, would leap from that motionless small figure 
arrested in its graceful joyousness on the dun sweep of 
hill, reared up behind, scarred and unheeding. 

After a moment she began to move again. She did not 
dare to signal to Marie. She was now filled with apprehen¬ 
sion lest Marie should ignore her and continue the ascent; 
then she thought how dreadful it would be if Marie waited 
there; she felt she could not go on; now, because of Marie, 
she realized her physical aspect. She gnawed at her lips, 
convulsively she fingered the handle of her umbrella, and 
still she went on, indomitable under all her fears and regrets. 

Marie turned to her companion, gracefully expressive 


ON HIRST HILL 


221 


with her arms and head. Mrs. Jesson saw the little blank 
white round of the man*’s face directed towards the field. 
Then Marie began to descend the hill alone, the man re¬ 
sumed the ascent. Swift, and light, and unreadable, Marie 
moved to her mother. 


IV 

Something compelled Mrs. Jesson to go forward again. 
She reached the end of the field just as Marie paused on 
the track about a dozen feet above the road. Mrs. Jesson 
crossed the road. She looked up at Marie. 

“Come up here,” Marie said in a clear, low voice. She 
folded her hands on the top of her walking-stick; her sar¬ 
castic, bright gaze rested on her mother. 

Looking at the track, Mrs. Jesson climbed the steep but 
short piece of ground and stopped before Marie. She then 
raised her eyes. A shiver passed over her and she said in a 
hoarse and unnatural voice: 

“Marie . . .” She did not go on. “If she loved me 
she couldn’t look at me like that,” she thought, “but I 
ought not to have come.” 

With one fat, gloveless hand hanging in front of her, the 
other stirring on the umbrella handle, her head a little 
tilted back, she silently gazed at Marie. 

Marie’s face, white with powder, swollen, and calm, had 
no expression; in their swollen sockets her eyes, darkened 
by the shade of a black lace hat, burnt somberly; her 
mouth, open slightly, looked sharp-edged and bitter. 

Slowly she turned and glanced back up the track, mov- 


222 


SECRET DRAMA 


ing her broad shoulders and neck gracefully and with an 
effect of power. “Get on to the grass,” she said. “Some 
one may want to pass here. The grass, not the bracken. 
Everything’s dripping. But I see you have boots.” 

Mrs. Jesson faced her from a damp tangle of whortle¬ 
berry bushes and grass. As she met Marie’s smile she re¬ 
pressed a moan and an impulse to wring her hands. Unable 
to bear that piercing, slow, ironical smile, she looked away 
at the Sussex distances, filling with mist and dusk. 

“Now perhaps you’ll explain why in the world you came 
here in clothes suitable for a garden-party, boots, and with 
Miss Baird’s umbrella.” 

Mrs. Jesson threw a distracted and wondering look at 
the umbrella, but began to speak at once, forgetting what 
Marie had said, disregarding even the expressive stare of 
those now unsmiling eyes. 

“Marie, why didn’t you tell me you were coming up here? 
Who is that with you? It will be dark soon. I don’t think 
you ought to be up here when it’s dark, darling. . . .” 

“Good Lord, good Lord,” Marie cried, sweeping the 
point of the stick over the ground, “are you quite mad? 
Oh, mother, I wish you’d try and not do such preposterous 
things. I can’t understand how you can be such a fool.” 
She fixed the stick in the ground again, and looked at her 
mother in a kind of icy rage. 

“Marie, I had to come. I knew you’d be angry, but— 
I had to come. It worries me so—thinking of you—with 
those men. Is it Jimmy or . . . ?” 

Angrily Marie burst out laughing; she stared downward, 
speaking with irritable gestures and in a vibrating voice. 


ON HIRST HILL 


223 


“Really, you are too melodramatic. To chase after me 
in those clothes and with a demented air because I go out 
with a man! Good heavens, do you imagine it’s the nine¬ 
teenth century? How did you find out I was coming here?” 

“Miss Nicholls told me. You only see the absurd side, 
Marie, but if ever you’re a mother . . 

“A mother!” Again she laughed, walking backwards and 
forwards, her eyes glittering, her face coarsened and exas¬ 
perated. “The chances of my ever becoming a mother are 
likely to be small if you rush to wrest me away from every 
man you see me with. This is the crowning act of your 
idiocy; positively it is idiocy. Have you no regard for 
appearances? I’m sorry to have to speak so strongly to you, 
but you don’t seem to have the slightest glimmerings of 
common-sense. How do you think I am to explain this 
escapade to Jimmy? . . 

“Is it Jimmy you’re with?” 

“Yes, yes, yes.” She paused, frowning, biting her lips. 
“Why are you so absurd? You’ve only developed this 
craze of haunting me lately. If I were a child in my ’teens 
it would be more reasonable, but there’s no reason for this 
continual, this frantic, suspicion. It makes us both ridicu¬ 
lous. What am I to say to Jimmy? That the kitchen flue 
has caught fire or that Bessie has eloped? He would find 
neither reason wilder than the truth that, in your conven¬ 
tional Christian morality, you can’t trust your daughter 
out after dark wflth a man, but must come and play bodkin. 
If they’re the kind of thoughts your religious sense gives 
you, thank God I’m a pagan.” 

She laughed. Then she became silent, examining the 


224 SECRET DRAMA 

knob of the stick, compressing her lips, her face growing 
old and dark. 

For a moment Mrs. Jesson, too, was silent. She sighed 
deeply, half closing her eyes. When she spoke she did 
not look at Marie; she looked before her and spoke in a 
low unmusical voice. 

“Marie, I’ve always let you have your own way. We’re 
not like each other; we can only be happy together by one 
of us giving way to the other. I’ve always given way. I’ve 
given you everything you wanted.” Her utterance grew 
more rapid; she blinked her eyes as if the dim bloom 
of the sky was too rich, too lovely, to be borne. “It makes 
me so unhappy that there should always be this—this 
friction between us. . . 

“But there needn’t be,” Marie cried, looking half angrily, 
half pityingly at her mother. “Good heavens, I long to live 
at peace with you, but you have such an extraordinary 
capacity for making scenes. Now be a sensible woman 
and go back and lie down. I know it’s your love that makes 
you fuss over me so.” She laughed good-humoredly. 

Mrs. Jesson gave her a strange, almost majestic look. 
Taller than Marie and with an air of severe, tortured reso¬ 
lution, there was something commanding, something spa¬ 
cious, about her. Marie rapped the stick peevishly against 
her shoe. 

“I can’t go back, Marie, and leave you here with Jimmy. 
I don’t like him. Why didn’t Tommy come? Miss Nicholls 
heard him say . . .” 

“Oh, this is all too ridiculous. I can’t imagine what 
you’ve worked yourself up into. Jimmy didn’t ask Tommy. 


ON HIRST HILL 


225 


I suppose he preferred a tete-a-tete” She laughed. “Make 
an effort, do, and be sensible. You won’t leave me here 
with Jimmy! This is farcical.” 

“You don’t understand, Marie, how everything you do 
makes up my life. You are my life. I’ve no life apart 
from you.” Her voice vibrated, she made a sudden passion¬ 
ate movement with her hands; when Marie stepped back as 
if she would fly from those hands, that passion, an awful 
shudder passed over her, but she went on speaking, forcing 
her words out between distorted lips. “Marie, I would 
rather see you in your grave than—than—that certain things 
should happen to you. Come back with me now, darling. 
I’ve done everything for you; do this for me. I don’t like 
Jimmy. I can’t leave you with him. Try and understand 
what I feel. Marie . . .” 

She made inarticulate sounds in her throat and then be¬ 
came silent. She trembled, and waves of darkness rose 
before her eyes; her thoughts were in chaos; she did not 
know what she wanted to say nor what the action was that 
she feverishly desired to do; she felt suffocated by some 
pressure; it seemed to her that she strove against iron 
bonds. She heard Marie speaking as she might have heard 
the voice of some one in flight, faint and diminishing. 

“There’s nothing to be gained by talking like this,” 
Marie said. “You’re upset. I haven’t the least idea what 
you mean. Go back and for goodness’ sake lie down. To 
talk like this about Jimmy is preposterous. You must try 
and see things as they are, mother. All your views are 
theoretical; you’re as ignorant of life as a child, and you 
raise bogies because people don’t live by the extraordinary 


226 


SECRET DRAMA 


jumble of conventions and platitudes which you call life. 
Matthew Arnold, and Mrs. Hemans, and Eliza Cook! 
Good Lord, it’s too funny.” 

“Oh, Marie, it’s what you call life that frightens me so.” 

With a fierce gesture she threw the umbrella from her; 
she stepped swiftly to Marie, her quivering hands seeking 
Marie’s beloved body. Alarmed and furious, Marie re¬ 
treated, her own hands making silencing and vehement move¬ 
ments. 

“Marie, what does it matter what people think? I know 
what you mean, but don’t think of trifles when you see 
I’m concerned with your happiness. There’s no one about, 
and if there were”—she cast a savage look round—“they 
would sympathize with me. I can’t always be thinking 
about appearances. I only care for you—for your safety— 
and happiness. Marie, come back with me now, dear. Can’t 
you see that I’m suffering? Don’t let us quarrel like this. 
Marie, don’t evade me.” 

She saw Marie still retreating, looking round her with 
disquietude, blackly frowning; she heard Marie’s sharp, low 
sentences, and she felt terribly her own impotence. Her 
fears flocked about her like wolves; she pressed her doubled 
fist on her hair and pushed it up from her brow as if every¬ 
thing which touched her was exasperating in her powerless¬ 
ness to grasp and crush against her that strong, inimical 
face and body. Her defeat seemed inevitable, and she cried 
out in a loud, harsh voice under the stress of that impres¬ 
sion of Marie’s distance from her: 

“Marie, I don’t want you to go with Jimmy. You can’t 
expect me to stand aside and see you dealing with your life 


ON HIRST HILL 


227 


yourself. I’m old. I can see where happiness lies. Be 
guided by me, by my experience, Marie. He isn’t good 
enough. You must marry some one fine—finer.” 

Now luminously she saw her desire. “Let’s go back to 
America, darling. Why should we stay here? It’s never 
been home to me. And there’s no one good enough for you 
in this little village. You won’t meet any one here of any 
—any character, personality. Let’s go back, darling. . . . 
You know, Marie, I want to see you married, but not to 
Jimmy, and I can’t bear to see that man Lucas near you. 
Come home with me now and let’s leave here altogether and 
go back to America. This is like exile. Over there, we’re 
with our own people. . . . Do try and understand, dar¬ 
ling.” 

She was holding Marie’s arm now; she uttered the last 
words with a rough and hopeless intonation, pressing the 
soft arm, staring at that gloomy and drooping face. 

Marie’s silence crushed her; she felt herself broken. Her 
nostrils opened quiveringly and tears filled her eyes. Her 
hand fell from Marie’s arm and lay stiff and outspread 
against her skirt. She drew her breath in short, difficult 
gasps; she could not see the country nor Marie for her 
tears, but she felt the presence of both—the dusk-washed 
solitudes, the eternal inhumanity of the hills, and that mo¬ 
tionless, calm figure which was hers and which was not 
hers, which was indissolubly linked with her and which yet 
denied and made futile the union. 

“Oh, Marie, you’re so hard,” she muttered, fumbling 
for her handkerchief, weeping with an almost childish aban¬ 
don. 


228 


SECRET DRAMA 


Her own words seemed terrible to her. She winced, mov¬ 
ing her body as though she wished to hide, to diminish, her¬ 
self. Marie’s shouts and angry gestures affrighted her less 
than this somber immobility, this downcast stare. She felt 
as if she were guilty towards Marie. She wanted to apolo¬ 
gize and humble herself; as she squeezed the handkerchief 
against her eyes she thought: 

“I can’t be a good mother. I can’t. If I were I should 
know how to manage her, how to avoid these scenes. I do 
everything wrong. O God, let her say something that’ll 
show she loves me.” 

She dared not speak; she felt that whatever sentence fell 
on her from those bitter and sunken lips would be merited. 
She was a senseless and wicked woman. 

Marie spoke in a quiet voice, looking seriously at her 
mother. 

“You see, we don’t understand each other. Because 
I act by reason and not by sentiment, and because I’m 
not a hypocrite, you think I’m hard. Do turn your back on 
the road if you can’t stop crying. I can’t imagine what 
any one passing will think. You’re so difficult to argue with. 
You say you want me to be happy, and yet you continually 
raise questions which are utterly without sense and which 
I can’t possibly, as a sane person, do other than disregard, 
and then what you call my brutality upsets you. You make 
it impossible for us to be happy together, mother. I don’t 
doubt for an instant that you do everything out of love 
for me, but I say that your kind of love isn’t a virtue 
at all; it’s a vice. It worries me and makes more trouble 
for me than a good, selfish indifference would. If you ever 


ON HIRST HILL 


229 


suggested any sensible course I should be ready to take it, 
but you never do. You can go back to America if you’re 
not happy here, but I shan’t come. To think we must ever¬ 
lastingly be tied to each other is absurd. Now go home and 
rest. I dare say you’ll have a rabid head after this. Jimmy 
will wonder what in the world has become of me. I abso¬ 
lutely can’t stop another minute.” 

She turned and stepped back on to the path, her gleam¬ 
ing, animated gaze searching for Jimmy amid the obscurities 
of the hill. “Do try and look as sane as possible,” she said. 
“You’ve got to live,” she stamped her foot, “with a regard 
for appearance whether you like it or not. You’ll be run 
in as a blind-o if you’re not careful.” 

Mrs. Jesson came rustling to her through the thick 
bracken and whortleberries. “Marie, is it nothing to you 
what I say? Don’t go with him to-night!” 

“Oh, good Lord, are you going to start it all over again! 
Pull that hat on straight, and button the coat up. And 
you’ve left Miss Baird’s brolly in the bushes. Those boots! 
They look ghastly. How you could do such a mad thing 
I can’t imagine.” 

She dragged the coat together. Mrs. Jesson caught her 
wrists. “Marie, come back with me. It’s nearly dark now. 
Listen to me—the coat don’t matter. I’m your mother, 
Marie.” 

Marie twisted herself free. “Good Lord, as if any one 
else would treat me so!” she shouted. “Don’t forget that 
brolly. And—go—home.” She ran up the path. 

Mrs. Jesson took a few stumbling steps in pursuit. 
“Marie—Marie. You’re going with that man?” 


230 


SECRET DRAMA 


“Yes, yes, yes!” She continued to run; then suddenly she 
stopped; she turned her pale, furious face to her mother, 
“Go home,” she said, her voice low and distinct. “Try 
and imagine what kind of effect your appearance will have 
on the village, and for my sake, to show your great love 
for me, act like a sane person. Now go back at once.” 

She continued the ascent. 

Mrs. Jesson could not control herself. Her despair was 
so dreadful that she tried to deny the reality of the scene. 
She saw Marie going, full of rage and profoundly immutable, 
strengthened, not weakened, in her intentions. She hadn’t 
touched Marie; the effects of her love, not the love itself 
—Marie saw only these. She felt that she had been with 
Marie but a few minutes; she had said nothing. For the 
first time she realized the supreme wild hopefulness which 
unconsciously had upheld her in her progress here. And the 
reality—the frustration, the rejection—the terrible reality 
of her powerlessness over Marie) her meaninglessness to 
Marie—crushed her. 

“Marie,” she called. 

She thought how beautiful Marie was, how she loved 
her. She pulled her dress away from her neck. “Marie— 
darling—I hate that man. Marie!” 

She shouted the name. 

Marie turned and made a gesture of stormy warning. 
She waved her hand towards the village. Half closed and 
black, her eyes seemed to burn with exasperation. She 
again turned and went on. 

Mrs. Jesson tore the lace on her dress. Her teeth chat¬ 
tered; she was no longer crying; but she could scarcely 


ON HIRST HILL 


231 


see the hill; she saw nothing but Marie’s figure passing 
upward towards a shining vapor which rolled above her like 
a smoke. She had a moment of strange hallucinations 
wherein she forgot Jimmy and why she had come there, 
and felt only as if an endless separation had taken place 
between herself and Marie; as if Death had claimed Marie; 
she forgot even that she would see Marie again. 

She mumbled between her dry lips, a O God, why do you 
let me suffer so!” 

Then her senses returned to her. The nakedness of the 
hill and the sky, the familiar reiteration of the stages of 
night’s approach, the actual significance of Marie’s retreat, 
were all perceived. She shivered. She felt awfully that 
Marie would have Jimmy, that she would have whatever 
position in life she wanted. She was not to be guided, she 
was not to be protected. She mounted that hill, a menacing 
and resolute figure swayed by unthinkable beliefs, by fright¬ 
ful intentions. 

“O God, guide her,” she moaned. “I can’t bear this. 
I can’t.” 

She made a step as though she would mount the hill. 
Then she stood stiff again, only her hands pulling at each 
other. She dared not follow Marie. There was nothing she 
could do. She rolled her eyes, her face haggard and aged 
in the faint religious light which fell, gentle as a perfume, 
from the flushing sky. She became incredulous. That walk, 
those hopes, that deep passion—and no end but this. She 
dragged her hands from each other violently and turned and 
took a few irregular steps downward. Then she remembered 
Marie’s instructions. She went for the umbrella, angrily 


232 


SECRET DRAMA 


pushing through the bracken, feeling the cold drops break¬ 
ing on her hands, and the sod lapsing from her foot. She 
grasped the umbrella and remembered that it was Miss 
Baird’s. She held it with a nervous strength as though 
she would crumble it between her fingers. The impulse to 
fling it from her was irresistible. She did restrain herself. 
Stabbing the earth with it she returned to the track, and 
then, as she again began the descent, other recollections 
came to her. 

She pulled her hat more over her brow, she buttoned her 
coat, she looked down with a vague, frightened expression 
at her boots. 

Her desolation became apparent to her in all its sorrow¬ 
fulness. Marie thought of her only as an unfortunate vis¬ 
ible encumbrance which must be prevented from becom¬ 
ing a disgrace. Her soul, her heart, were unseen by Marie, 
were contemptuously ignored. 

She cast a look of horror at the gathering darkness, see¬ 
ing the southward distances fading into the smudge of 
mist and night, and the evenly nibbled edge of Brend Hill 
black against the smoky glows of the west which burnt 
down into dusk, into dullness, even as she gazed. 

The silence, the sure, serene, unalterable actions of the 
scene appalled her. Tears filled her eyes. She went down 
the track, stumbling over stones and into abrupt dips, slip¬ 
ping on sticky inclines, assisting herself with the umbrella 
without losing ever that ferocious sense of it as hateful, as 
meriting ruin. 

With movement her agitation increased. She became 
tortured by the thought that she was leaving Marie. Fright- 


ON HIRST HILL 


233 


ful scenes passed through her mind. She felt as if she 
were screaming aloud and almost wondered over the large 
silence which brimmed the circle of land between the con¬ 
verging skies. Her thoughts were like flames which flickered 
in an immense darkness and revealed abysses of evil and 
pain. She crossed the road and strode without caution, 
without perception, into the rutted shadowiness of the 
field track, and all the time she thought she had 
brought Marie up for this; she had loved her, tended her, 
sacrificed to her, hoped, planned, striven, and this was 
the end. 

She hated Jimmy. She could not, at this moment, act 
or think with either reason.or justice. He had become mon¬ 
strous to her. She hurried along the track, pieces of brier 
and hawthorn catching her sleeve, and releasing her, fresh 
airs, smelling of mist, of blackberries, of bonfire smokes, of 
the deep, mysterious, wet core of the hedge, puffing stealth¬ 
ily towards her, the hedge seeming to stretch before her 
taut and sharp, the fields lying round her emitting their 
dim, holy light, the sky revolving over her, silent and with¬ 
out ripple but never still, roots starting up before her, and 
lean branches, and strewings or piles of weed cut from the 
hedges—she hurried along and she saw only the hill and 
Marie and that man for whom Marie was leaving her. 

She said many times, “0 God, don’t let her do any of 
these dreadful things.” She thought: “She is good, but 
things are so different now. She don’t consider wicked 
what seems terrible to me.” 

She passed into long ages of contemplation of Jimmy, 
remembering her past visions of Marie’s potential husband. 


SECRET DRAMA 


234 

The memory of those reveries, those joyous forecasts, made 
her cry out. 

“Mother and suffering,” she said, “the terms are synony¬ 
mous. The greatest happiness, the greatest pain.” 

She had longed for Marie’s marriage. Marriage! She 
thought of May Bessant, and stood still, staring with suf¬ 
fering eyes at the pure, delicate contours of the woods 
ahead. She must go back to Marie. She saw the threaten¬ 
ing resolution on Marie’s face, and went on, past those in¬ 
terminable straight markings of furrows or crops, past the 
sweeps of stubble, soft and blurred in the distance, but 
sticking up close by like teeth, bitter and keen. A feeling 
of intense dislike for these fields, these grave rises, began 
to burn in her. She had a dim feeling of their perfection 
and calm, and she saw, therefore, more tragically, her own 
gloom and faults, the gloom, the fault, the mystery, of all 
human life. She became full of pessimism. 

She was walking very rapidly. The fields seemed without 
end. There was not a stir nor a movement within sight, nor 
in the heart of that rolling darkness. She scarcely remem¬ 
bered that she had a purpose; she seemed only to hear 
Marie’s command “Go . . .” and she moved as if she 
were under a spell, as if she were condemned to everlasting 
movement. All her thoughts and visions at last gathered 
into the one numbing thought of eviction; she heard Marie 
driving her away; she fled, her soul frozen in protest. 

So at last she came to the stile beyond which lay the 
Coltham road. She got over the stile, tearing her hands on 
some hawthorn needles which evilly rested on the top bar of 
wood. She cast a dazed look round her and saw a few 


ON HIRST HILL 


235 


large yellow stars poised in the wash of green above the 
sharp black fir-tips. They seemed to communicate some¬ 
thing to her. She stood still, vaguely staring, while she 
wondered. 

Then the mental torpor into which she had sunk was 
destroyed. Night, darkness, solitude. She made a sound 
in her throat as the message seemed voluminously to roll 
upon her, burying her heart. She was no longer wild and 
emotional. A kind of fatalism settled upon her as she 
walked down the road. She thought that she looked on 
life as it was; modern life, neurotic, sensuous, destructive. 
She told herself that Marie was entering upon this life 
and the knowledge drew from her no more than a faint 
tremor through all her being. 

She became aware that she was tired; alone of her dis¬ 
torted feelings, her dislike of the country remained. Think¬ 
ing of Hirst Hill she unconsciously conceived it as adverse in 
its influence. A quality, hostile and ruinous, seemed to rise 
from the fields tilted into the scattered embers of the stars. 
She thought of America. 

How hopefully she had returned from there to Rowe 
Green. She recalled the day of her reunion with Marie. 
A fortnight ago! She moaned silently. The sweet prepara¬ 
tion, the dreams, the delighted intentions. 

Against her palm the umbrella handle felt smooth and 
damp. Her grasp of it tightened. 

She became suddenly savage. Everything had happened 
through that girl’s presence. 

She had been walking more composedly; now she hur¬ 
ried, clutching her coat in front with a faithful mechanical 


236 SECRET DRAMA 

remembrance of Marie’s wish that the silk dress should be 
hidden, walking now in the road, now on the grass, glaring 
ahead, munching with her lips. 

Dido’s figure stood before her, advanced to her, powerful 
and ruthless, out of the remote unknown multitude which 
shared with her the light of the stars and sun. Intrusion, 
she weepingly declared. Nothing would have happened if 
Dido had not come into their lives. Upon Dido she cast 
the responsibility. She felt she could not bear to meet Dido. 
Entrance into the house became an added torment because 
Dido was in it, wrecking its security, its happiness, its 
power. The house was no longer home. She was again 
shaken by that sense of an impious act of violation. She 
stormed silently and almost without outward expression. 
Scenes of her life with Henry, of Marie’s childhood and girl¬ 
hood, occurred to her. The house was a temple. She had 
a moment of frenzy wherein she felt herself compelled by 
justice to cast Dido out, breaking her, obliterating her— 
an act of justice, a defense of Henry, of Marie, of her own 
motherhood, imposed upon her by that motherhood. 

Now the Green lay before her. 


PART III 


MISS HAMMOND 















CHAPTER I 


THE END OF THAT DAY 

i 

She went with energy and a fixed, angry stare through the 
porch and into the hall. Miss Hyde and Miss Wilson were 
standing there together, their bodies touching, a look of 
solemnity on their faces. They were both speaking. She 
gazed at them irritably. 

They ceased speaking. Openly they observed her figure, 
her dramatic and disheveled figure; the mud, the scratches, 
the torn places; her inflamed face, her burning glance as 
at something not visible nor present. 

She became sensible of their scrutiny. “What’s the mat¬ 
ter?” she demanded harshly. She laid one hand on the 
banisters. 

Miss Wilson looked discomposed. “It’s Miss Ham¬ 
mond,” she explained. She cleared her throat. “I went 
up with her supper and she wasn’t in her room, and so I 
looked in the garden . . .” 

“We looked all over it,” Miss Hyde broke in. “Every 
corner. We didn’t miss a corner and she isn’t there. . . .” 

“So we looked throught the rooms and we were just say¬ 
ing she must have gone out when you came in.” 

“And knowing you wanted to know when she went out,” 
Miss Hyde said, energetically nodding and glancing, “we 

239 


240 


SECRET DRAMA 


were just beginning to feel anxious. I was saying I’d run 
up and get my goloshes and go out and see if I could see 
her. It’s dark, isn’t it? She oughtn’t to be out.. I’m so 
glad you’ve come in. I said to Miss Wilson, ‘If only Mrs. 
Jesson were in we shouldn’t feel it such a responsibility.’ ” 

She continued talking, but to Mrs. Jesson the rest of her 
sentences were meaningless. Mrs. Jesson struck the um¬ 
brella down into the stand. She drew her hands over her 
moist face and then looked round her at the glowing hall and 
the two-women in it. There was fright in her gaze. Bessie, 
Bessie. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t understand. 

Miss Hyde’s voice died away. She stared with glistening 
intensely sharp eyes at Mrs. Jesson. Her expression grew 
momentarily more serious, more shining. She impercept¬ 
ibly moved her hand towards Miss Wilson’s dress, flinching 
a little as if she felt herself in the presence of some mani¬ 
festation, awful and sublime. 

Miss Wilson’s eyes stood motionless and dull like circles 
of plush. Their stare seemed to take in all of that upright, 
big body with its rich, disorder, that convulsed face, almost 
childish in its pain and perplexity. Her fingers stole be¬ 
hind her. A sudden senseless little noise cracked out oq 
the deep quietude. She was lifting and releasing again one 
of the handles on the bureau. 

Mrs. Jesson spoke loudly. “Miss Hammond gone out? 
I’ll go and look for her. It wasn’t your fault, Nelly.” She 
stood still, staring over their heads. 

Involuntarily they glanced behind them, not perceiving 
in their nervousness that she gazed only at the marching 
shapes of the actions demanded of her—the practical, sim- 


THE END OF THAT DAY 


241 


pie duties, all disengaging themselves from blackness, from 
void, and ranging themselves before her mental vision. 

When she spoke again in the same loud, abrupt tone, the 
soft little heads of the women jerked round once more with 
a curious bobbing look as of things impelled hither and 
thither by some masterful force. 

“I’ll go out,” she repeated. “Light a fire in her room, 
Nelly, because she’ll be frightened perhaps, if she’s run 
out with any notion. She may have got alarmed about me. 
She’s so sensitive. And I can’t always hide from her that 
I’m worried, and . . 

She became, lost in her hopeless, fixed stare. The women 
neither moved nor spoke. Then she started, looked severely 
and intently at them both, made an unmeaning movement 
with her hands, and went' rapidly out on to the road again. 

It was now quite dark. She looked vacantly at the 
Green, at the huddle of houses round it, spotted with lights, 
at the dark luster of the pond under the mysterious bend¬ 
ing forms of the willows, at the weak pallor of the roadway 
flung between the flat, opaque levels, like a band of light 
on the surface of an unfathomable sea. 

She moved across the grass towards the road. 

The round little knobs on the stiff reed spikes rapped 
against her boots; the grass, spread about her with that illu¬ 
sive look of depth, of gentle flowing. The moonless sky 
swept up into a flawless,, bloomed arch, seeming to shake 
off stars like a golden dew. 

She kept her eyes fixed on. the road. When, in the splash 
of light outside the Crown Inn she saw the figures of two 
women she experienced no emotion. She went forward, un- 


SECRET DRAMA 


242 

conscious of her surroundings, almost unconscious of her 
aim. 

The two figures stood facing each other, oddly motionless 
and unnatural. As she drew near to the edge of the grass 
she could see the prudent impassivity of Bessie’s face, she 
heard Bessie speaking in a squeaky voice. 

“I’m afraid I shall have to go away from here,” Bessie 
was saying. “I’m bringing such trouble on all the kind 
friends. I’m so grateful to you all. I mustn’t bring trouble 
on you. I must go away.” 

Then she saw Mrs. Jesson. Her eyes rolled a little. She 
became silent. 

“Bessie,” Mrs. Jesson called. She went quickly to Bessie 
and clasped her by the arm. In the soft yellow lamplight 
the whites of Bessie’s eyes gleamed humidly as she rolled 
them, again. 

“What nonsense are you talking, dear? What makes you 
think you must go away? I told you, Bessie, that there 
was no trouble.” 

She turned to the other woman, who was speechless and 
staring. 

“It’s a fancy of hers,” she explained. “I’m sorry she 
bothered you. What made you come out, Bessie?” 

She began to lead the old woman in the direction of the 
house. 

Bessie did not resist. She walked, moving her legs only, 
staring in front of her, her hands doubled on her bosom. 
She began to speak in the same high, intense little voice. 

“So sorry to have given you trouble. I bring so much 
trouble to you, don’t I? I’m sure I’d better go away. It’s 


THE END. OF THAT DAY 


243 


all through me that you’re worried. Did you come to look 
for me? So kind of you. Such a lot of trouble. I think 
I’d better go back to America.” 

America! The name momentarily distracted Mrs. Jes- 
son from the assurances she, with weariness, was shaping 
in her mind. It plunged her back into the abyss of her own 
futile desire. 

“Oh, America, Bessie. You don’t want to go back more, 
than I do. If'I could get back there—with Marie—I should 
be happy.” 

She had a pause of luminous intuition in which she did 
not notice that Bessie had stopped and that she, uncon¬ 
sciously responsive, had stopped too. 

She iaughed abruptly, a smile of wisdom and irony in 
her eyes. 

“At least I think I should be happy. I imagine every¬ 
thing would be different out there, but it wouldn’t. I 
shouldn’t be any less a mother. I can’t get away from my 
terrors by flying to America.” 

She n'oticed that they were standing still. “What are 
we stopping for? Come along, dear. Why did you come’ 
out? You know, Bessie, that it’s nothing but happiness for 
me to have you here. Come along now, dear. I’m very 
tired, and it’s past your supper-time.” 

She pulled at Bessie’s arm. She thought how irritating 
Bessie was. Perceiving the possibility of trouble with Bes¬ 
sie, a feeling of despair came over her. She suddenly saw 
herself lying on her bed in the cool and dark room. Her 
fatigue was so great. She trembled with her nervous, pas¬ 
sionate desire to lie down—and forget. Now she felt that 


SECRET DRAMA 


244 

oblivion was all she wished for ; and it seemed to her that 
Bessie alone made that wish vain. 

She pulled at the fat, soft arm without moving the bulky 
figure inflexibly stationed in the middle of the grassy track. 
She senselessly stared at the spongy, round face wherein 
the eyes appeared black and dimly lustrous. 

“What terrors?” Bessie said. Her hands jerked a little 
upwards towards her chin. “Why do you want to fly to 
America?” 

Through her open mouth her breath came gaspingly. 
She looked petrified by an inexplicable dread. She seemed 
to stand, slightly tilted* toward Mrs. Jesson, with a look of 
preparedness for flight in all her tense and swollen limbs. 
“What terror?” she said again, with an intonation of heart¬ 
felt excitement. 

“Bessie, Bessie, why can’t you understand me, dear? It’s 
my way of talking—a silly way, because I’m worried, and 
tired. There’s no terror for you. You’re quite safe, dear. 
Come on in. Why did you come out? What’s the matter 
with you, Bessie? I thought you knew you could feel quite 
safe and happy here.” 

Bessie moved forward again, taking little, unsteady steps. 
She looked round her, stirring her eyes only, cautiously re¬ 
fraining from moving her head. 

“I wondered where you were,” she said. “You never go 
out. And it seemed such a long time. So sorry if I’ve wor¬ 
ried you when you’re tired.” 

With an air of suspended breath, of extreme though con¬ 
trolled terror, she slightly turned her head and looked over 
her shoulder. “Such a nice woman that was,” she chattered 


THE END OF THAT DAY 


245 


on. “I asked her if she’d seen you. We’re nearly at 
the house now, aren’t we? I can see people in the porch. 
Now you can lie down. You aren’t angry with me, are 
you?” 

“You know I’m not, Bessie. If I speak harshly to you, 
dear, it’s for your own good. You mustn’t make so much of 
trifles. ... I told Nellie to light a fire in your room. 
She’ll have your supper ready at once.” 

Silently they crossed the Green. They did not hurry; 
they dragged their feet through the long grass and wet pulpy 
places, pressing close to each other, staring at the porch, a 
primrose-colored square with dark moving shadows in it. 
Both had a weary and yet vigilant expression. 

They reached the road. Without diverting her eyes from 
the porch, but with a cunning look growing on her unread¬ 
able and gloomy face, Bessie whispered: 

“Do you think we shall go back to America—soon?” 

“I don’t know, Bessie. I want to.” She looked round 
her at the lustrous curves of space poised over shapes which 
stood abrupt and still. “I want nothing more. It’s the 
dearest wish of my heart.” 

She dropped Bessie’s arm and strode across the road to 
the porch. She looked at Dido and Hob, at Miss Wilson 
and Miss Hyde. 

“Miss Jesson hasn’t come back?” she said. 

“No,” Miss Wilson replied. 

Bessie’s feet pattered quickly after her. She heard, like 
a little cry extracted by some sudden arbitrary force, Bes¬ 
sie’s questions rising with a weak and vain sound from the 
deep blackness behind. “Where can Marie be? She ought 


SECRET DRAMA 


246 

to be in. now, oughtn’t she? Is that why you’re worried? 
I’m so sorry. I wonder where she is.” 

Mrs. Jesson paused, staring at the four others. She stood 
erect and silent before them, and they did not speak to 
her but looked back with confused uneasy expressions. 

Her gaze at last rested on Dido. Dido’s presence there 
with Hob drew from her a loud trembling answer to Bessie. 

“She’s out with Mr. Ainger, Bessie.” 

She looked with rage and hate at Dido. In her soul 
there was storm. Her hands and face grew damp. She 
could hardly see and she felt as though she had been struck 
mentally with death, so complete was her inability to shape 
one thought. 

“Out with Mr. Ainger,” Bessie echoed her words, and the 
sentence reached her. She turned her back to Dido. 

“Get Miss Hammond her supper at once, Nellie,” she 
said, going into the hall. 

Miss Wilson uttered a breathless assent and followed 
them out of the porch. She went towards the kitchen, 
holding her head very still with an appearance of being 
frozen beyond movement, beyond sound. 

Mrs. Jesson mounted a few stairs. She then turned. 

“You’re coming up, Bessie?” she said. 

Miss Hammond, her head sunk on her shoulders, was 
staring at Dido. 

“Yes, oh yes. I’m coming,” she exclaimed, looking round. 

With a guilty and meek expression she followed Mrs. 
Jesson. 

At her door they both stopped. They looked at each 
other. Mrs. Jesson dimly wondered over Bessie, over her 


THE END OF THAT DAY 


247 


presence there and her significance. She saw neither reality 
nor importance in Bessie. She felt, vaguely and yet deeply, 
irritated by the sense of other existences moving round her. 
The house seemed full of stir; it seemed crowded, and she 
fiercely though hardly consciously resented the sounds and 
actions which distracted her from the immense purpose of 
her life. Marie and herself. She wanted to be alone in 
the house, in the world, with Marie. And they all inter¬ 
vened. She wanted to sweep them away. The house had 
passed beyond her possession. She hated every one of the 
figures in it. Dido and Hob, her heart wailed. 

She put out her hand as if to push Bessie away. She 
walked quickly down the passage. 

“Don’t you like her being out with Mr. Ainger?” Bessie 
piped up, With a movement of her whole body towards Mrs. 
Jesson. 

The mother turned. “Oh, Bessie, I hate it. I’m afraid. 
If it were Mr. Ramsay . . . But Miss Baird has taken him. 
If I’d known I’d never have let her stay in the house.” 

She darted a look vengeful and black towards the stair¬ 
case. Then she opened her door and went in. She stood 
in the darkness, listening. 

Bessie’s irresolute shufflings, the murmur of voices in the 
porch, faint, sharp noises in the kitchen—there were no 
other sounds than these. 

She closed the door. 

She gazed through the darkness at a vision of Marie, 
figuring Marie as a child who looked at her with a woman’s 
eyes, a child weak, desirous, helpless, turning to her for 
gifts, for protection, with a deep faith in her omnipotence. 


SECRET DRAMA 


248 

‘‘Oh, Marie, I can’t give you what you want,” she cried. 

The confession of her impotence seemed awful to her, 
awful and incomprehensible as the failure of some law of 
nature. There came strangely into her mind memory of 
her hour of childbirth. She cast an incredulous look at the 
broad, dim bed. There seemed to be something monstrous 
near her, but she did not know what it was. 

“Oh, why do we bear children?” she said, moving away 
from the door. “They don’t understand our love; they don’t 
return it, and there comes a time when we fail them. They 
look to us and we can’t answer. . . . My love, and my long¬ 
ing to help her are—are ” She could not think of the 

word. Angrily she felt for the matches, and struck one in a 
feverish and stupid way so that she broke it—“are frus¬ 
trated,” she continued with a kind of gloomy triumph, “by 
that girl. Something unforeseen falls on us and we’re help¬ 
less. That girl makes all my love useless.” 

She stood without movement, full of horror as at some 
act of cruelty, full of self-sympathy. And not for a moment 
did she cease to listen for Marie’s return. 



CHAPTER II 


THE NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 

i 

At ten o’clock that night Dido went up to bed. Hilda 
was already in the bedroom. 

Having reached the bend in the staircase, Dido paused 
for a moment to look through the narrow window at the 
Green, and at the sky with its stars. 

She saw a man and woman on the road near the gate 
and recognized Marie and Jimmy. Her lips curled in a 
smile and she saw Marie’s restrained but provocative move¬ 
ments, the sudden lifting of jimmy’s arms towards Marie’s 
shoulders. His finger-tips touched Marie. Then he was 
grotesquely patting space. Marie had sprung resolutely to 
the gate. She waved him off with her hand. 

Dido continued her way upstairs, her face calm and happy. 

“I certainly haven’t dealt a mortal blow to Marie,” she 
thought. “But what a frightful descent—Jimmy after 
Hob!” 

She reached the landing and glanced down the corridor 
which lay over the hall. At the end of this corridor there 
was another wide window, and she saw Miss Wilson staring 
through, as she had done, at the road and its scene. 

Dido stopped. She felt checked in her happiness. She 
looked with perplexity at Miss Wilson. Tragic, pitiful 
figure with those decorations of lace and ribbon! Timidity 

249 


250 


SECRET DRAMA 


oppressed Dido. She had a keen and wounding perception 
of Miss Wilson’s loneliness, her immense loneliness and 
anguish as she looked down at Marie and Jimmy. She was 
beyond reach of succor, condemned to solitary contempla¬ 
tion of her woe. No one-could,.no one dared, stretch out a 
hand and clasp her. And yet only a few feet of space sepa¬ 
rated her from Dido, and Dido’s heart meekly and compas¬ 
sionately sought her. 

Hardly breathing, her head sunk on her chest with a 
pensive and ascetic look, Dido waited. 

Miss Wilson almost immediately turned. Her dilated 
eyes looked straight at Dido. She at once left the window 
and took a few steps down the corridor. She began to 
finger the lace on her sleeves. Her soft, dull eyebrows were 
arched. She had a stupefied and blind appearance. 

Dido’s gaze was supplicating; it entreated the confidence 
and naturalness she did not dare request in words. Pent-up 
emotion! Miss Wilson would make herself distracted with 
it. If only she could pour it out on Dido. Convention and 
pretenses and formalities—they were all horrible things. 

And yet, at the same time, Dido wished to evade inclusion 
in Miss Wilson’s life. She was dismayed by her responsibil¬ 
ity. One part of her mind insidiously denied that Miss 
Wilson had any claims*on her. 

Life was so much more simple if there was only oneself 
and those few whom one loved to be considered. For all 
these chance visitants from the vast surrounding multitude 
to have also to be recognized and assisted—that was a 
tremendous thing. 

But she could not turn from that clear duty. Through 


NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 251 

her mere humanity Miss Wilson had claims on her. She 
dumbly offered herself to Miss Wilson. 

“Just going to bed?” the other woman said in a trembling, 
hoarse voice. She laughed, and her laugh was dreadful to 
Dido because of its perversity and unnaturalness. 

Dido flushed. She lowered her eyes with the feeling that 
there was something wrong and therefore ugly in Miss 
Wilson’s rejection of*her help, in her denial of any need of 
help. She imagined herself guilty of bad taste or imperti¬ 
nence, and she chafed at a system of relationship which 
could make her generous impulses seem thus. 

“Yes,” she replied. “Good night.” 

“Good night,” Miss Wilson repeated in the same tearful 
and giggling voice. 

Dido went on and into her bedroom. 

n 

Hilda was sitting at the mirror, brushing her hair. 

Dido walked rapidly over to her, speaking in an agitated 
and yet half-humorous voice. 

“Marie’s just come back with Jimmy, and Jimmy was 
endeavoring to embrace her.” She stood still, laughing, and 
furtively gazing at Hilda, from under her thin, quivering 
lids. “I imagine there’ll be an engagement announced 
soon. I can’t conceive any one falling in love with Jimmy, 
can you? . . . And Miss Wilson has been gazing at them 
from the landing window and saw the attempted embrace.” 

Hilda put down the brush. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Poor 
thing. Then she knows now? 


• • • 


252 SECRET DRAMA 

“That it was all a delusion? Yes. She looked stricken. 
I’m awfully sorry. But if people will be so mad ... I 
don’t like to think what she must be feeling now.” 

She sat down on a chair near Hilda and took off her 
brooch and watch. 

“Poor thing,” Hilda repeated but with a different intona¬ 
tion, one, now, not of dismay but of placid acceptance of 
Miss Wilson as a victim. “Still, it’s all her own fault. I 
can’t think how she could be so silly. He hadn’t given her 
the slightest cause to think such a thing.” 

Dido glanced at her. She saw with gladness Hilda’s per¬ 
fect re-establishment in her slightly dogmatic calm and 
good sense. Hilda’s gaze was exquisitely without shadow. 

How secure Dido now felt! She did not think she could 
ever again lose sight of Hilda. There drifted into her mind 
the Russian proverb which Turgenev’s Duellist several times 
uttered, “The heart of another is a dark forest.” She could 
apply that to the other hearts in the house, but not to 
Hilda’s. Ever since she returned with Hob from Horsham 
and brought him in to dinner Hilda had been penetrable 
and familiar. Unerringly Dido had perceived her mental 
and emotional flights; she knew that Hilda was unchanged; 
she believed her to be unchangeable; she believed that the 
whole orbit of Hilda’s movements was known to her. 

She smiled, keeping her eyes on Hilda in happy 
expectancy. 

What she expected, Hilda almost at once brought out. 
“I don’t think I’m very interested in Miss Wilson,” Hilda 
said, smiling too. “I’d rather hear how you got on at Hors- 


NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 253 

ham.” She began to laugh, looking at Dido with delighted, 
significant eyes. “That is, if it isn’t too precious to tell! 
I imagine it may be.” 

Dido laughed. She kept her hands motionless in her lap. 
Her little face remained motionless, flushed, and discreet. 

“Of course not,” she said presently. 

As she did not go on, Hilda, brushing gently, said: “I’ve 
always looked forward to the time when you’d have some 
one in love with you, Dido. I thought it would be so ex¬ 
citing. We should have so much to talk about. I suppose 
there’ll be a great deal you won’t tell me; I’ll guess.that in¬ 
stead! But do tell me anything that isn’t too—too spoony. 
I’m longing to hear it. I am really.” 

She gave Dido her open, truthful eyes. “I think he’s good 
enough for you,” she said, with some energy. “I’m sure 
aunt and uncle will think so too.” 

She was serious for a moment. Then she colored; she 
laughed in her girlish, embarrassed way; her small shoul¬ 
ders and her severe head shook with her laughter. 

Dido pressed her palms against her cheeks; she closed 
her eyes, savoring her deep joy. 

“Hilda, you are an idiot.” 

They laughed together. Dido then went on. “What he 
most wanted to convince me of was not anything ‘spoony’ 
at all; it was that he didn’t like Miss Bessant and was sur¬ 
prised to find her visiting here. I said I thought nothing 
was more natural considering the position she holds in Miss 
Jesson’s life—bosom friend, ally, model. And he said, 
‘That’s just it —model ’ and looked very enigmatical.. I’m 


254 


SECRET DRAMA 


sure he meant to convey something. He said almost at 
once afterwards that he liked Mrs. Jesson. . . . Hilda, Mrs. 
Jesson hates me.” 

Hilda gasped. “Nonsense.” 

“Oh, she does. She likes him and she doesn’t like Jimmy. 
I’m awfully sorry. You can’t seem to do anything in this 
world without hurting some one else.” 

There was a silence. Then Hilda said in a cold, thin 
voice: 

“If other people are hurt, Dido, it’s their own fault. It 
certainly isn’t your fault. I think Mrs. Jesson’s unjust. 
You didn’t try to get him. And besides—I don’t believe he 
ever cared for Marie.” 

“She hates me,” Dido repeated musingly. “She thinks 
he cared. She thinks I’ve robbed Marie. She adores 
Marie.” 

Frowning, but with a perplexed smile on her lips, she took 
a slide out of her hair. “I seem, innocently, to have upset 
everything. It’s a horrid idea. If I wasn’t here Hob might 
have had Marie and then Jimmy mightn’t have come here 
and subjugated—also innocently, poor man!—Miss Wilson, 
and Mrs. Jesson would have been happy. How we all af¬ 
fect each other! . . . Admire my wisdom, Hilda.” 

Hildo looked blank. “I don’t think you can talk like 
that. I think one brings things on oneself. People aren’t 
sensible. You haven’t done anything. . . . But never mind 
the others. Tell me about Horsham.” 

Dido’s face grew subtle and joyful. After a moment she 
began to take down her hair, speaking from behind it of 
Hob. 


NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 255 


hi 

After she was in bed she lay thinking. She heard the 
others coming to their rooms, and slight scraping noises on 
the verandah. Silence at last fell on the house, and then 
her musing became more peaceful, more egotistical. 

The time passed and still she did not sleep. 

It seemed to her that there had been silence for an hour 
when at last she heard a sound in a room across the corridor. 
With a contraction of the heart she recognized it as the 
sound of some one weeping. 

She lifted her head from the pillow. She experienced a 
feeling of tension and dismay as she listened to those muf¬ 
fled sobs falling on the perfect quietude of the house. 

“It’s Miss Wilson,” she thought. 

She sat up in bed, her gaze resting on the door. She for¬ 
got Hob and her own happiness. She thought, 

“Oh, poor thing; poor silly little thing.” 

A few minutes passed. Now the steady weeping had be¬ 
come inexpressibly painful to her. She glanced at Hilda, but 
there was no movement from Hilda. She looked through 
the window, but she could not distract herself from her 
intent and perturbed listening. 

A vivid picture of Miss Wilson came before her. She 
thought she had never heard anything so mournful and 
hopeless as that sobbing. She began to imagine Miss Wil¬ 
son’s state of mind, arriving at a conception of loneliness, of 
anguish, which made her feel that an involuntary cry of 
distress, a cry for succor, was coming to her from that 


room. 


SECRET DRAMA 


256 

She irresolutely moved the sheets off herself. “Shall I 
go to her?” she whispered. “She hasn’t much reticence. 
She told us all about it. She hasn’t the feelings of pride 
we should have, and she’s absolutely no self-control. . . . 
Good heavens, it sounds awful. I think I must go.” 

Still she sat hesitating, staring at her picture of Miss 
Wilson cowering amid the ruins of her hopes, circumscribed 
by all the terrors of moral gloom and solitude, of frustra¬ 
tion and poverty. 

Determinedly she got out of bed, she put on slippers and 
her dressing-gown; then stealthily she opened the door and 
stepped into the dark passage. 

She felt adventurous and apprehensive, she felt ashamed 
as if she were doing something ridiculous or unwise. There 
appeared to be an ironical and contemptuous look on all the 
closed, faintly glistening doors. The silence was cruel. 
Clearer now, that weeping seemed to rise from the heart of 
an immense vacuity as if Miss Wilson were alone of her 
kind. It became impossible to believe that she was sur¬ 
rounded by beings to whom her sorrow must be comprehen¬ 
sible, and to whom it should be momentous. 

Dido tapped on her door. 

The weeping ceased. She heard the bed creak. She 
tapped again and then went in. 

“It’s I—Miss Baird,” she said softly. “I do hope you 
don’t mind my coming in. But it distressed me so . . . 
and it seems so stupid that there should be any pretense. If 
I can help you . . .” 

She had closed the door. Carefully she felt her way to 
the bed. Miss Wilson was sitting up in bed. Her back 


NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 257 

was to the window, and Dido could see only her long, flat, 
white figure, the circular frill of a collar, and a little flat 
head where the hair sagged in a weak roll at the base; she 
could just distinguish Miss Wilson’s eyes, and, looking like 
weals, a few pieces of hair stuck to her wet cheeks. 

Dido sat down on a chair by the bed. Her face felt burn¬ 
ing, and she could not speak. She wished she hadn’t come; 
she thought with longing of her room, and Hilda, and 
the ghostly Hob with whom she had been communing. She 
felt as if she were cut off from that room for ever. Miss 
Wilson, motionless, speechless, but audibly breathing, be¬ 
side her, had become suddenly unmanageable, alarming; 
she had become a burden, a menace. 

Dido turned her head and looked timidly and appealingly 
at Miss Wilson. 

The pitiful woman gasped, cleared her throat, moved her 
hands on the frills of the nightgown. 

“It’s very kind of you,” she said. 

There was a silence. She twitched the frill, moving 
her wild head, staring blindly and vacantly downward. 

Dido frowned at the floor. “You told us about it, you 
see,” she said without expression. “And it seemed so horrid 
to leave you alone. If you don’t want to talk ... I don’t 
know what you want. It’s so hard to get to know any one, 
isn’t it? I want to do whatever you think will help you.” 

Miss Wilson burst out weeping. She did not cover her 
face; she vehemently dragged at her collar, her face con¬ 
vulsed, her eyes wide open in that look of bewildered wretch¬ 
edness. 

“It’s most kind of you,” she gasped. “To think that any 


SECRET DRAMA 


258 

one cares. . . . People are so cruel. . . . They don’t be¬ 
lieve you’ve feelings. . . . I’ve never had any one love me 
or care about me . . . never . . 

She panted, making tortured little sounds in her throat, 
rolling her eyes, shuddering. 

Dido bent towards her. She put out her hands to Dido; 
with extraordinary strength she pressed Dido’s hands; then 
she released them; she began to pull the counterpane into 
little ridges, she spoke rapidly, choking and gasping between 
her words, but at once continuing as though she heaped up 
a terrible accusation against an invisible enemy in the pres¬ 
ence of a witness whom she might at any moment lose, whom 
she must impress, appal, afflict, secure. 

“I thought he wanted me. . . . He always talked to me 
when he came. He put himself out to talk to me. . . . And 
now I see him with that other girl. ... I believe he still 
wants me. But she’s tried to get him . . . and she’s got 
money—and she’s a lady.” 

She moved her narrow body with an effect of desperation 
and anguish. 

“It’s been disappointment—and giving love—and not 
getting any back all through my life,” she panted, glaring 
senselessly before her. “I thought I was going to be happy 
this time. I thought he loved me—he did—and now . . .” 

She clutched her knees, she whimpered, she threw a ter¬ 
rified and desolate glance at Dido. “I’ve always suffered,” 
she cried, sobbing and trembling. “It’s cruel—people are 
so cruel—you feel for me. I’ve been treated so—all my life 
—cruelly. You’re the only one who seemed to care whether 
—I was alive—or dead.” 


NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 259 

She wailed the last word. Her weeping became terrible. 
Dido was trembling, and without thought, without light of 
any kind. She touched Miss Wilson with stiff hands, she 
made little, reassuring, meaningless sounds. She felt bitter 
and angry towards something without in the least knowing 
what was the object of her rage. 

“It’s so kind of you,” Miss Wilson went on, “it does help 
me—to know some one understands and feels for me. I 
seem always to have been alone. If I’ve thought I was going 
to have a friend—they’ve always disappointed me and 
turned out different—to what I expected. ... I’ve met 
with nothing but ingratitude—and unkindness—on every 
side. People don’t care how much they make you suffer. 

. . I used to think—when I was a little girl—that some 
day a beautiful lady would come and love me and take me 
away. ... I always wanted some one I could love—and 
trust—some one to love me—and I’ve found that you can’t 
trust anybody—they only think of themselves; they don’t 
know how to love. ... I shall never be able to believe in 
any one again. Everybody I trusted has failed me. . . . 

I know what people are now. . . . They’re not worth think¬ 
ing about—caring about. Not one person in this house 
cares what I feel—or what becomes of me—except you. I 
shall always remember you for this.” 

Her voice had dropped to a hoarse monotone. She sighed 
deeply, her hands began to grope over the upper part of 
the bed. In a silence she found her handkerchief and 
pressed it upon her eyes. 

“What ought I to say?” Dido was wondering. 

She felt pity for Miss Wilson, but she was no longer an- 



26 o 


SECRET DRAMA 


gered and excited. Miss Wilson’s sufferings were seen to be 
self-created. She was an idealist. Her sentimentality was 
immense and stupid. But how passionate was her feeling 
of isolation, her desire for alliance! Universal desire! 
Gazing at the spare, bowed figure and abject head, Dido 
knew that, consciously brooding over the wrongs, the depri¬ 
vations, the disillusions she had suffered, Miss Wilson was 
unconsciously yielding herself to a new warmth and light, 
the warmth and light of Dido’s touch, glance, voice. When 
she spoke again Dido had a fresh conception of her—she 
was speaking now in an unrealized but strong sense of her 
reality, her importance, to some one else; she suffered, but 
her suffering was complicated by a wonderful calm in the 
knowledge of contact, of union, achieved at last. She was 
known, she was seen. With every sentence she proved to 
Dido the singular fineness and interest of her personality. 

In the darkness Dido’s eyes smiled seriously. 

“I shall always remember it,” Miss Wilson said, lifting 
her head and gazing towards the window. “I shan’t stop 
here, I couldn’t after what’s happened. I couldn’t speak 
to him knowing how he’s treated me. Some people can 
forget anything; they haven’t—they haven’t any ideas as 
to how one person ought to behave to another. I have.” 

She compressed her lips. There was a vibration all along 
her body. 

“I shall leave here to-morrow,” she said. “1 can’t stop 
another day—and see them . . .” 

“You’ll go to your sister?” 

For an instant Miss Wilson remained silent and immobile. 
Then again she burst into sobs. 


NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 261 


“I—can’t—bear it,” she whimpered between her sobs. “It 
makes me so unhappy. ... I wish I’d never come here. 

. . S-some people can be happy.” 

She jumped out of bed, flinging the sheets from her with 
a violent movement. She walked up and down the rug by 
the bed, pulling at the handkerchief, muttering and weep¬ 
ing. 

Dido went to her. 

“I’ve suffered so,” Miss Wilson moaned, giving her a 
wild look. “You’re very kind—but you can’t do anything 
. . . no one can. ... I love babies so too.” 

She stood still, her hands over her haggard cheeks, her 
body shaken by her noisy sobs. Loudly and hoarsely she 
cried out her sentences, standing, with a ragged and insane 
look in the weak diffusion of light from the window. 

“I can’t go back—to my sister . . . should see them 
still . . . must go away . . . London ... a married 
friend there. . . . Oh, oh, oh! ... how could he. . . . 
I’ve always—wanted to be married. ... I feel so bad.” 

She drew a long, shuddering breath, her teeth chattering. 

“Lie down again,” Dido said, embracing her and feeling 
bones through the thin flesh. “You must do what I tell 
you.” 

Miss Wilson clambered into bed with a meek and ex¬ 
hausted look. She lay down, her eyes closed, her mouth 
screwed up. 

Dido caressed her. “Go to your friend’s to-morrow,” she 
said, “and leave me the address. I will think what can be 
done.” 

“I’ve got—to earn my own living.” 


262 


SECRET DRAMA 


“I know. That’s what I’m considering. Now shall I 
nip down and make you some tea?” 

•Miss Wilson rolled a negative head. 

“You’d better go back—to bed,” she mumbled. “You’ll 
be tired. I’m very grateful. I think I shall sleep—I’m so 
worn out.” 

Dido thought, “You poor wretched fool.” 

She kissed the mass of tears and sticky hair on Miss Wil¬ 
son’s cheek. “Don’t think no one cares. My cousin and 
I will both see what we can do, only you mustn’t cry any 
more. Nor speak as if you’re too old to have any chance 
of marriage. I’m sure you’ll meet some one who will— 
love you.” 

She had a momentary glimpse of enormous and ghastly 
comedy. She could have laughed. She straightened her- 

r- 

self and gazed down at the melancholy body stretched out 
starkly with a look of death, and she felt impatient and 
contemptuous. Miss Wilson was breathing faintly like 
something smaller and feebler than a woman. At the same 
time, scarcely stronger than that breathing, she thought she 
heard a sound in the passage. 

She looked towards the door, and the silence seemed pro¬ 
found. She had a sense of the great polished dome of the 
sky built beyond the window, and the limbs of the hills 
outspread, and not a sound, not a movement for miles 
until the land ended at the edge of a glittering and rumbling 
sea. 

“Then I may leave you?” she said, bending again. 

“Yes. Thank you—so. Good night.” 


NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 263 

Miss Wilson opened her eyes. With an expression of 
shame and pride she looked at Dido. 

Dido smiled. She cleared Miss Wilson’s face of hair. 
“Good night. Give me the address to-morrow. Go to sleep 
now.” 

She deepened her tender, reassuring smile. Rapidly she 
went to the door; she opened it and stepped into the pas¬ 
sage; she cast a guarded glance round her. 

On the opposite wall, a few yards away, she saw a motion¬ 
less, floating object, without shape, without color. She ex¬ 
perienced an uncontrollable childish feeling of dread. She 
shut Miss Wilson’s door and the action seemed courageous, 
irremediable; it seemed to leave her at the mercy of the 
house. The peculiar atmosphere of the house, tense under 
its silence, violent under its impassivity, rolled upon her, 
mastered her. She felt as though she had been thrown at the 
house and it had captured her; the walls slid to left and 
right of her with the look of barriers; the low ceiling hov¬ 
ered over her with a stifling pressure. 

She stared keenly at that opaque bulge on the wall and 
found herself staring at two round ball-like eyes which, still 
and prudent and strange as an animal’s, were directed to 
her own face. 

“It’s Miss Hammond,” her mind said. 

At once she derisively criticized herself. She stepped 
noiselessly but swiftly towards her own door, a little beyond 
which Miss Hammond stood. 

Miss Hammond instantly retreated, rubbing the wall with 
her head and shoulders, her large, pale hands spread on it 
like lumps of fungus. 


SECRET DRAMA 


264 

Dido beamed. “Do you want anything, Miss, Ham¬ 
mond?” she whispered. “You’re all right?” 

Extraordinary house! 

“I don’t want anything,” Miss Hammond replied with 
some precipitation. “Quite all right, thank you.” She 
stopped retreating, her face in its lividness coming out on 
the darkness above her dim dressing-gown like the upturned 
floating face of one drowning. “So kind of you to ask,” 
she said with a stern, gloomy look. 

Dido smiled, abandoning the idea of solving the old 
woman’s presence here. She went into her own room and 
closed the door firmly. 

“What people!” she ejaculated under her breath. “Posi¬ 
tively I can’t take Miss Hammond too as one of my re¬ 
sponsibilities! The love victim is quite sufficient. What 
an exciting time!” 

She merrily regarded the sleeping Hilda. In the passage 
she could hear Miss Hammond’s amazing wandering. Her 
look grew fixed and absent. Miss Wilson, Miss Hammond, 
Mrs. Jesson—all disturbed, all struggling for security, for 
peace. What passionate rebellions and despairing conflicts 
those rooms concealed! 

She made a movement with her hands, affirming her ir¬ 
responsibility. And she was again chilled by the feeling of 
being netted, possessed. She couldn’t free herself. The 
room wasn’t hers. It belonged to the house. Closing the 
door, she had not closed out the house. She was without 
refuge, without defense. Those other conflicts rumbled 
round her; they tossed, impelled, and covered her. 

She walked gravely to the table by her bed, and taking up 


NIGHT. IN MISS WILSON’S ROOM 265 

the glass of lemonade there, drank a little. She would have 
lighted a candle and read, only she was afraid she would 
awaken Hilda. 

Thinking of Hob, she lay down in bed. 


CHAPTER III 


WITHDRAWAL 

i 

The next morning as Mrs. Jesson was leaving the dining¬ 
room after breakfast, Miss Wilson came out of the kitchen 
and, looking at her, stood still against the nearly closed 
door. 

Mrs. Jesson looked back. “Do you want anything, 
Nellie?” she asked. 

Trembling and gasping, her glance wandering, Miss Wil¬ 
son answered: “Yes, Mrs. Jesson. I’m very sorry. I hope 
it won’t put you out. I don’t like to—to seem not to con¬ 
sider you but—I can’t help myself.” 

She nodded her head up and down. “You’ve always been 
kind to me. But I feel—that it’s a matter. ... I must 
think of myself, I mean.” 

“What is it you want, Nellie?” Mrs. Jesson asked, with 
a savage, exasperated glance. 

Miss Wilson’s eyes became indignant and tragical. 

“I want to leave here,” she said. “I want to go at once.” 
She lost her firmness. “I feel—it’s not treating you well, 
but I can’t give a month’s notice. I’d rather lose the money. 
I want to go at once. I’m—I’m sorry. But I must think 
of myself. I’m forced. ... I don’t want to say anything. 

266 


WITHDRAWAL 


267 

It’s better not. I- It will take me to-day to pack and 

write to my friend. Of course I’ll see to everything to-day, 
and Miss Hyde—she says she’ll be pleased to help in any 
way she can—after I’m gone.” 

Mrs. Jesson’s look remained dark and severe, but her dis¬ 
pleasure over the mere fact that Nellie existed to distract 
her from her deep brooding had vanished. She felt wonder 
and interest as she gazed at Nellie. Nellie was in trouble. 
It appeared to her as if in the course of an eternal anguished 
march along the bottom of a lightless pit she was arrested 
by a cry similar to the cry of her own heart; she glimpsed 
the nearness of another abyss of desolation. 

But how could Nellie suffer? Nellie was not a mother. 

“Aren’t you happy here?” she demanded. 

Miss Wilson’s pointed face sank, achieving a ruined look. 

“It—it’s nothing to do with my position here. You’ve 

always been very kind. I can’t give any reason. It’s-” 

She stooped and shrank back against the door. “It’s a 
private matter. I want to go. I hope—you won’t blame 
me.” 

“Of course not, Nellie.” 

Staring at that bent body, that hanging face, she tried to 
think what Nellie’s trouble could be. But it was impossible 
to think. In her mind there seemed a deadness; she could 
only stare at the woman, with a perception of the door, and 
an angle of tiled sink and wall beyond. This woman was 
unimportant. She had no place in Mrs. Jesson’s life. 

Yet she spoke with an intonation of kindliness because, 
far off and small, something seemed to tell her that she 
must be kind. Neither her brain nor her heart so warned 




268 


SECRET DRAMA 


her—both were silent, both frozen. It was as if Miss Wilson 
herself begged, “Treat me gently.” 

“If you want to go, Nellie, you must. I wouldn’t put 
any obstacle in your way. But I shall be sorry to lose you. 
Is there anything I can do to help you?” 

Miss Wilson shook her head; she muttered incoherent 
words, and still moved backwards, pushing the door open 
with her shoulders. 

“You must do what*you want, Nellie. Don’t worry. . . . 
Eh? Oh, your wages. We’ll see about that, dear. I 
don’t want you to lose anything because-” 

She was silent while with a look of troubled perplexity 
she caught sight of some obscure conflict, heard the mur¬ 
murs of a passionate protest and lamentation. She looked 
at Nellie intently, unhappily. There was a stir through 
all her brain as though she awakened to life through the 
dim consciousness of the beat and swirl of a deep misery 
near her own, and human like her own. 

“Can’t I help you, Nellie?” she said, her eyes expressing 
fear and personal woe and kinship in suffering. 

Miss Wilson did not look up. She again shook her 
crushed head. “You’re very kind, Mrs. Jesson, but it’s bet¬ 
ter that I shouldn’t say anything.” 

Her air of mystery passed unnoticed. Mrs. Jesson, sigh¬ 
ing, continued as if there had been no break in continuity— 
“just because you feel obliged to go in such a hurry. I 
don’t know what your trouble is, Nellie, but don’t let any 
thought about money worry you. That will be all right.” 

She looked furtively and apprehensively at the closed 
dining-room door. Marie would say she was quixotic and 



WITHDRAWAL 


269 

foolish. But Marie needn’t know anything about it. It 
was so unpleasant always to exact one’s rights. What were 
a few shillings? Of course Marie was right; but- 

“Don’t let that worry you, Nellie,” she repeated in a firm 
voice. 

Nellie’s fragmentary response at last ceased. They stood 
without movement, not looking at each other. Then Miss 
Wilson stepped back. At once Mrs. Jesson went quickly on 
into the hall. She stared round her. She wondered what 
she had been about to do before Nellie stopped her. She 
paused and tried to recall her intention. 

She noticed how quiet the house was. A dim veil of sun¬ 
light covered the Green and hung thick and silvery over 
Broad Down. There was a smell of burning weeds in the 
air. 

Inconsequently she thought of her sisters. Her face 
formed into an expression of deep gentleness and longing. 
She went up the stairs, without aim, simply because she felt 
the need of movement. 

“If we could only go back to America,” she thought, re¬ 
peating the words many times. 

She noticed that the door of the linen-cupboard was 
open, and she crossed to it and gazed steadily into the dark 
recess. She began to touch the linen. 

“Marie might meet some one there who was good enough 
for her,” she thought. 

Her hands grew still. She must return to America; she 
would. 

“What am I doing here?” she exclaimed, staring round 
the cupboard in surprise. 



270 


SECRET DRAMA 


“She closed the door and then stood looking at it, seeing 
the ship, the sea, her sisters. 


ii 

Miss Wilson left the house the next morning at half-past 
nine. She was catching the ten-thirty train at Mellbury. 

Mrs. Jesson said good-by to her in the hall. In the porch 
she found the cousins and Miss Hyde. 

Dido gave her hand a firm, manly pressure. “I’ll write 
to you,” she said. “You won’t mind meeting us again, will 
you? At another place, I mean, not here?” 

“No, no. I should like to. You’ve done me so much 
good.” Miss Wilson bent her head and pulled a glove on. 

“I shall be lonely without you,” Miss Hyde exclaimed, 
with a peevish, wandering stare round. “No one to talk 
to. Dull—that’s what it will be. I’m sorry you’re going, 
but of course”—she lifted her head and cast an obscurely 
angry expression at the sky—“things will happen; we can’t 
plan everything as we’d like. It’s been so nice and jolly 
here. I thought it was going on. But there you are—I 
suppose we must all have our disappointments. I hope we 
shall meet again. I shall often think of the chats we’ve 
had in the kitchen. Dull old place it will be now. I shan’t 
want to go into it. I feel mopey directly I think of it. 
Mopey. Directly I thought of it I felt something come 
over me—a sort of dark feeling. Horrid. I shall miss you.” 

Miss Wilson gave her a dim, almost peaceful smile. She 
stood up a little straighter, looking at them all with a kind 
of meek triumph. “I like to hear you say that,” she re- 


WITHDRAWAL 


271 


plied, clasping Miss Hyde’s extended hand. “It does help 
—to know people care—and miss you.” She glanced wanly 
round the Green. “I daresay I shall see you all again. I 
hope I shall.” 

She began to tremble. “Thank you—thank you all. I 
shall always say—if—if I’ve had trouble here, I’ve had hap¬ 
piness too in your kindness. I must go now. I’ve got a 
long walk.” 

She moved towards the gate, Miss Hyde accompanying 
her and still squeezing and shaking her hand. 

A voice behind Dido exclaimed: “Are you going? Do 
wait. Say good-by to me.” 

Miss Hammond, with astonishing swiftness, pressed be¬ 
tween Dido and Hilda without touching Dido and followed 
Miss Wilson. 

“Are you going?” she repeated in a breathless little vcice. 
“Why are you going away? Do wait.” 

Miss Wilson turned round. 

“Do tell me why you’re going,” Miss Hammond urged, 
with a plaintive and distressed intonation. “I’m afraid I’ve 
given you such a lot of trouble and anxiety. Is that why 
you’re going? Do tell me. I’m so sorry. I’m doing such 
harm to all the kind ones. I think it’s I who ought to go 
away.” 

She stood with her body drawn back so that her blue cot¬ 
ton skirt became shorter in the front and showed her ankles 
and her large shoes. She kept her eyes on Miss Wilson, 
but she seemed to listen for some sound which might crash 
out in any part of the place. She waited for Miss Wilson’s 
answer with an air of resolution. 


SECRET DRAMA 


272 

Miss Wilson looked bewildered. She put out her hand 
awkwardly and in confusion. When Miss Hammond did 
not take it she drew it back with an appearance of vexation, 
of shame. “You haven’t been any trouble to me,” she said. 
“Not at all. I’m going. . . . It’s quite a private matter. 
Good-by. I mustn’t wait any longer or I shall lose my 
train.” 

She smiled at the others, receiving with a rather dis¬ 
traught air Miss Hyde’s rapid sentences. She nodded her 
head, smiling and blushing. 

Miss Hammond rolled her eyes round at them all, cover¬ 
ing them with a great lusterless, ominous glare. She turned 
and went up the path to the house, her thick lips glued to¬ 
gether, her face glistening with perspiration; she moved her 
feet very gently; a spatter of dark oak leaves on the amber 
mist of light made a background for her powerful and ugly 
head. 

She entered the house. 

Now Miss Wilson was crossing the Green. Miss Hyde 
ceased to wave her handkerchief and came back to the 
cousins. She looked discontentedly at them. 

“Isn’t everything quiet?” she said sharply. “I shall be 
glad when we leave this place and go to Blagdon. Poky old 
place, I call it. Nothing but cows—and bonfires—and 
trees. I don’t think it’s good for one to be buried alive 
with nothing to see but a few old cows—silly things they 
are too, always munching and staring and mooing—silly. 
It’s depressing. I’m sure it isn’t good. I don’t feel very 
grand this morning. I hope I’m not going to have anything. 
The place is dull enough without having any one ill. I’m 


WITHDRAWAL 


273 


sure. Miss Hammond’s gone in? She gives me the creeps. 
I believe she’s got something on her mind. If I were Mrs. 
Jesson I’d have a nurse for her. I believe in looking after 
that sort of people. You never know what they might do. 
She might murder us all in our beds. Oh, you can laugh. 
You’re young and happy; you don’t believe anything awful 
could happen. But it can. All this hollering and screech¬ 
ing—I believe she’s got something on her mind. I hope 
she doesn’t come bothering me. If she does, I shall tell 
Mrs. Jesson. I’m not going to be hollered at—not when 
I’m not feeling very grand. The place is dismal enough 
without that.” 

She continued these complaints at lunch and at tea-time. 
She said she had pains all over her. She continually made 
angular and unmeaning movements with her head, her inno¬ 
cent brows, her hands, her feet, seeming in an extremity of 
morose irritation. She had pauses of silence wherein she 
gazed moodily before her, her face disagreeable or affrighted. 
She looked round the room several times as if she were pene¬ 
trated. and crushed by a new aspect of it which she feared 
was to be permanent and which presently drove her to an 
angry scared twitter of complaints. 

“Merely because Miss Wilson’s gone,” Dido reflected. 

She thought there was something touching in Miss Hyde’s 
vision of loneliness and hush. She found pathos in those 
dismayed hostile glances at the room. Miss Hyde gazed at 
a vast sterile disorder of material things—earth, brick, wood, 
and the piercing glitter of stars, the dispassionate dead 
beaming of moons. She saw multitudes of human beings 
staring at each other with cold unpleasant eyes, avoiding 


274 


SECRET DRAMA 


each other, revolving absurdly, dying, effaced; she saw 
graves, meager little things, under the livid stare of those 
eternal stars, that silent sky. The reason for her existence 
seemed inscrutable. 

And all because Miss Wilson had gone. 

At tea-time Dido said to her: 

“I shall suggest to mother that we have Miss Wilson 

\ 

down at Blagdon as housekeeper. We should have to bring 
some one from town. We should never be able to get help 
down here. And as we know her . . .” 

“Oh, I do call that a good idea,” Miss Hyde cried, beam¬ 
ing. “That will be nice. Just like you to think of any¬ 
thing like that. Always kind and considerate. Lovely. 
It’ll be lovely. I do call that a good idea. You always 
think of the right idea.” 

For the rest of the evening she wore a calm and satisfied 
air. 


CHAPTER IV 


IMPACT 

Marie had spent the greater part of that day sitting on her 
bed, smoking, writing a letter, and reading. Several times 
Mrs. Jesson came to the dining-room window and looked 
through it at her, or from the pergola gazed at the verandah 
and the bed and the broad, curled-up figure with the lowered 
head and the enigmatically changing face. At each of these 
times she thought she would speak to Marie. Marie had 
not yet alluded to the walk with Jimmy and she had kept 
silence herself, but that silence tormented her. She thought 
every time she looked at Marie that she must break it, and 
she involuntarily clenched her hands, her body rocking 
towards Marie, a thunder of phrases in her head. And 
then she seemed to see Marie’s annoyed glance, and her 
heart fiercely resented the affliction she proposed to cast at 
it. She couldn’t have another scene. She must wait, be 
sensible, patient. What did she expect Marie to say to 
her? There could be nothing. And now, at least, Marie 
was under her eyes. . . . But who was she writing to? 
May? It would certainly be May. Then she thought that 
she hated May, and she strode through the house with a 
sudden purposeful air, though she had no purpose, and began 
energetically to shut or open windows, fill cans with water 
and splash water over the flowers, almost shouting at Bessie 
for so perpetually moving about after her instead of resting. 

275 


SECRET DRAMA 


276 

In the spaces of time between these scrutinies of Marie 
and during those which followed them she brooded over 
the chance that she might return to America with Marie. 
Her desire to do so had become an obsession. She would 
not think of probability, the hard probability that Marie’s 
actions in America would befjwhat previously they had been; 
she dreamed of beautiful shapings of fortune; she pro¬ 
duced from the heart of a radiant vague scene a magnificent 
and noble personality; the man who should be suitable for 
Marie. She stood trembling, experiencing bliss and pain, as 
she imagined this man approaching Marie and worshiping 
her; she thought with terror and with longing of Marie’s 
engagement, her marriage. At one moment she hated that 
man, accusing him of rendering her bereft, of making her 
motherhood null: did she bring Marie into the world only 
to resign her to one who, heretofore, had lived and known 
happiness and calm without Marie? She asked terrible 
questions of that man, disbelieving him, loathing him for 
what he had been; she swore that she would never let 
Marie go; men were vile; she would retain and preserve 
Marie; how frightful a thing it was to be a woman! 

And the next moment she reassured herself and thought 
with joy of Marie as the wife of an influential man, sub¬ 
servient to those beautiful laws of married love, secure, 
making sublime abnegations; she thought of Marie as a 
mother. 

She grew confused and dizzy through her mental stress. 
The scene in which she stood bewildered her by its dishar¬ 
mony with the events through which she felt herself to be 


IMPACT 


277 


passing. She came to her senses with a long, astonished 
stare at the walls round her and the bronzed woods and 
hills beyond the window. She pressed her fingers against 
her clammy palms, dismayed by the remembrance that she 
had neither peace nor security nor certitude; that she was 
far off from those states of happiness and solemnity, des¬ 
tined, perhaps, never to attain them, menaced by unspeak¬ 
able chances, the victim of inconceivable acts of cruelty. 

It became, then, possible to relinquish the idea of America, 
that supreme desire, and to say that less would suffice. 
Contemplating the dark present, she told herself that she 
would abandon her sisters, her country, her dreams, if she 
could gain Hob for Marie. She would stay in England 
tranquilly if she could do that. She liked him and Marie 
loved him. 

“I could live happily in a dungeon if she were near me and 
happy,” she thought. 

It was Hob too whom Marie wanted, not any distin¬ 
guished American. But England and Jimmy Ainger. 

“I can’t bear that,” she said, with an expression of 
hatred. 

She stood brooding until the prospect became so certain 
and so awful that she impetuously resumed her movements 
in the house and the garden, wondering dimly how it had 
all come to pass, burning with resentment, and sometimes 
stopping and gazing at Hilda who sat reading alone, or at 
Bessie who persistently, speechlessly, followed her, feeling 
that there was something she must say and worried because 
she could not think what that something was. 


278 


SECRET DRAMA 


n 

When she went to bed she could not sleep. She lay with 
her eyes closed but without the sensation of restfulness. 
She kept altering the position of her head on the pillow 
and irritably pushing at the curling pins in which she had 
put her front hair. She could not cease thinking. She 
longed to lie blank and relaxed, but she could not. Through 
her closed eyelids she felt herself staring very sharply and 
brightly into a room where many figures moved, and a disk 
of sea marked with bitter-looking ridges, and streets, houses, 
and then furniture, hanging lights, and faces. All mingled 
without coherence, without distinctness. 

At last, desperately, she sat up. She looked round the 
room. She felt very angry with herself. 

“I’ll get a book and read,” she thought. “Worrying like 
this—it’s so silly. I’ve never been quite so silly before. 
But I knew when Marie’s marriage came near . . .” 

Again she looked round the room, not understanding the 
meaning, the presence, of all the things in it. The silence, 
the knowledge of other rooms beyond this one, of the calm 
void beyond, and a curled moon falling like a shaving of 
gold towards the Weald—they all seemed strange, they 
seemed phenomenal. 

She got out of bed and walked backwards and forwards for 
a little while in her dressing-gown, not thinking, staring at 
her big, pale feet; and feeling that shapes like quick, dark 
wings went and came across her eyes. Then she remem¬ 
bered her intention to read. There were no books in the 
room. She put on slippers, and left the room and passed 


IMPACT 


279 

down the passage and the stairs, across the hall, and into 
the dining-room. 

She lighted the gas. 

The housemaid had set the table for breakfast before 
she left. Mrs. Jesson gazed at the wide Pompadour cups, 
the oak tray, the round mats, the napkins. She stepped 
towards a bookcase, not looking at it, looking straight 
before her. The curtains were not drawn over the win¬ 
dows, and the light pooled the gravel path and flowed 
to the phlox which came out in a frigid, blanched splen¬ 
dor. 

She stopped before the books and stared at them. 

Meaningless; meaningless. What was she doing here? 
What was it she wanted? 

Her brain cleared. She read Dean Farrar’s Life of Christ, 
The Hunting of the Snark. She used to read that to Marie. 
. . . How sweet Marie was as a child. . . . 

She lifted her head as if adjusting a weight. Decisively 
she picked out Dean Farrar and pressed it against her fat 
side. Rapidly she went to the window and looked through 
a side pane at the verandah. 

“I wish she wouldn’t sleep out,” she thought. “It’s get¬ 
ting too late in the year.” 

She could just see the bed and the mounded rug. She 
gazed for a moment and then she returned to the door, put 
out the light and again entered the hall, making no sound 
on its carpet. 

She turned the bend of the staircase. She looked up, ex¬ 
pecting to see the narrow darkness and the less dark band 
of the ceiling. She felt astonished when instead of that 


28 o 


SECRET DRAMA 


hollow tunnel she saw a broad, equal figure which moved 
down it away from her. 

“That’s Bessie,” she thought, and she opened her mouth 
to call the name. But at once she restrained herself, think¬ 
ing of the other sleepers. She moved more quickly. 

She wondered why Bessie was out of her room. She 
looked at the long dressing-gown, and the arms bent and 
pressed to the ribs, and the gray hair hanging down smooth 
and straight. 

“She’s going to my room like she did the other night,” 
she thought. 

Then she saw Bessie pass by her door and still move on, 
and she knew that this supposition was wrong. 

“What’s she going to do?” she said, making no sound 
but forming the words with her lips, and for the first time 
she felt that there was something dreadful and unnatural 
in the silence, in her own presence here instead of in bed, 
and, most of all, in that old woman pacing, without a break 
in her even glide, without a movement along her stumpy 
form, towards the end of the passage. 

She felt as if she were looking on Bessie for the first 
time. She was pierced by the thought that Bessie was, 
essentially, a stranger to her. When had she ever pondered 
over Bessie’s reveries, endeavoring to capture the phantoms 
that peopled them? 

“Can she be walking in her sleep?” she asked herself to 
escape this rigorous self-examination. She thought how 
Bessie had been more eccentric lately; she tried, with a 
sensation of supreme dread, to grasp Bessie’s character, 
recollected fragments of sentences, united them, stared at 


IMPACT 281 

them, and they ebbed away, leaving her breathless and 
trembling as after frantic haste. 

Her heart cried “Bessie,” and she thought she had 
shouted the name aloud, and the silence and Bessie’s disre¬ 
gard bewildered her. 

She was now on the landing and she almost ran down it, 
stretching out her hand to grasp Bessie. 

Then the old woman stopped, and, slightly turning, faced 
a door. 

Mrs. Jesson stopped too. All her fear suddenly left her. 
She was amazed that she had been afraid. The familiar 
solid shape of that figure and profile made her want to smile 
at the notion that there was anything in Bessie obscure or 
momentous. She waited quite placidly to see what Bessie 
would do. 

Bessie grasped the door handle and turned it. 

“Why—that’s Miss Baird’s room,” Mrs. Jesson thought. 

She was astounded. Why did Bessie want Miss Baird? 

The sense of culpable and complete ignorance again op¬ 
pressed her. She stared at Bessie in a stupefied way, re¬ 
ceiving impressions without being driven by them to any 
particular emotion. She did not feel as if she were related 
to Bessie or Bessie’s actions. She seemed to watch these 
things from another world; she could not, at this moment, 
believe that any word or movement of hers could be effect¬ 
ual. Thus, stupidly, she noticed that Bessie was holding 
something in her left hand, something small which pro¬ 
truded about an inch above her puffy, soft fingers; she saw 
Bessie open the door and enter the room. 

She gazed at the spot where Bessie had been. 


282 


SECRET DRAMA 


Then she ran down the passage, knocking her ankles 
together, coming against the wall and swerving from it, im¬ 
pelled by a terror which had no shape, which seemed to her 
to spring merely from the fact that Bessie had passed out 
of sight. She could not have said that she knew Bessie had 
passed into Dido’s room; she felt as if an unknown black¬ 
ness had engulfed Bessie, and, mingling with this feeling, 
confusing her terribly, was the knowledge that her heart was 
beating with frightful violence, was the thought that she was 
a wicked woman. She did not know why she thought this, 
but she did think so with intolerable force; she felt abased, 
there was a clamor of accusation and reproach against her¬ 
self in her heart. 

Then she reached the open door. She grasped the frame 
of it and stared into the room. She said “Bessie,” but even 
to her own ears the word was not audible. She pressed her 
doubled hand on her heart, the book hard against her breast, 
and, drawing her breath in jerks, seemed to lose the power 
of further movement, passing into a state of intense mental 
clarity, feeling herself gifted suddenly with a more than 
human intelligence, with a calm that was more than won¬ 
derful, that was immortal and without flaw. It was like the 
gift of vision to a blind man. She felt as if she had whole 
ages to study the things which had for ever surrounded her 
unseen and unsuspected. 

Bessie was standing by the table which was set next to 
Dido’s bed. On either side of that table the beds stretched 
palely, each bearing a long, quiet body and a dark head. 
On the table there were two books, the little slightly shining 
disk of a watch, and a glass half-full of liquid. 


IMPACT 


283 

Bessie’s stern and immense eyes moved round, staring at 
these things. Her hands drew together, and the little ob¬ 
ject in them turned and, held only between her finger and 
thumb, became more definite. 

“It’s a bottle,” Mrs. Jesson said to herself, with a dim 
surprise. 

She watched Bessie remove the cork. Holding them both 
high up against her bust, Bessie looked over them at Dido. 

Mrs. Jesson’s hand grew rigid on the woodwork. Sen¬ 
tences cracked out in her head like pistol shots. 

“Its a little bottle—it’s—it’s like the laudanum bottle.” 

She passed through a region of blackness, of emptiness. 
She made a movement with her eyelids and imagined that 
she must have closed her eyes because for an instant, 
wherein she sank into that black void, she ceased to see the 
room and then, the instant was over, and she saw Bessie, 
the beds, the table, the glass. 

She mumbled to herself, fingering the wood, pressing the 
book into her flesh, “It’s the laudanum I gave her to make 
her sleep.” 

And with that statement her unnatural calm was broken. 
She saw everything, there was an awful radiance somewhere 
—in her head, she believed; and Bessie’s intention, and all 
that had shaped that intention, were plain to her. She 
couldn’t move. She wanted to scream, but though her 
mouth was open she knew she could not produce the slight¬ 
est sound. 

She felt that she was horrified, that she was appalled; she 
listened to a voice which shouted at her that Bessie, driven 
quite mad by a perception of anguish in Mrs. Jesson’s. 


SECRET DRAMA 


284 

heart—Mrs. Jesson whom she loved—and knowing that 
from Dido’s presence had evolved that anguish, was attempt¬ 
ing to poison Dido. She listened to that voice and she told 
herself that she must cry out, that she must seize Bessie. 

Why did she stand here doing nothing? she voicelessly 
demanded with a surge of fury against herself. 

She couldn’t move. She gripped the door, and the stuff 
of her dressing-gown. She knew that there was a reason 
for her immobility; she discerned its dark, shapeless mass 
looming over her, and she kept silence, she kept passive, 
through a profound and irresistible prudence. 

She saw Bessie move nearer the table and bend a little 
over it. Immediately she thought how Bessie would pour 
the stuff in, she imagined Dido drinking it; she suddenly 
saw with extraordinary vividness Miss Hyde coming out 
of the bedroom with the empty glass; she came out thus 
every morning; Dido always drank the lemonade. 

She became violently agitated. She rolled her tongue 
round her mouth and looked at the room with a dehumanized 
and savage look. She knew now why she remained still and 
without sound, but the knowledge was far from the surface 
of her mind; it lay hideously, like a monster, in some pit, 
some fearful and unrealized pit of her nature. She didn’t 
look at it; she consciously averted her eyes from it, and 
now she was motionless, soundless, not in response to its 
existence but because she dreaded making it obvious, tu¬ 
multous, not to be denied. 

She saw Bessie pour some of the laudanum in the glass, 
and instantly her agitation passed; she felt interested and 
approving; she began to tell herself things in a simple, lucid 


IMPACT 


285 

manner. Dido would drink that and she would die; then 
Marie could have Hob. Marie loved Hob. And he would 
soon forget Dido; young men were like that; he would come 
back to Marie. 

She looked curiously and coldly at Dido’s still body, at 
the back of Dido’s head. Dido looked dead now in her 
stillness. But she was living, and powerful, and destructive. 
She had destroyed Marie’s happiness. Marie loved Hob, 
and Dido had made that love frustrate and dreadful. If 
Dido were dead, Marie would be happy again; Hob would 
return. 

Bessie had poured poison in that glass; Dido would drink 
it. The only thing to do was to step noiselessly away; 
Bessie would come away too, and at some time Dido would 
wake and drink that poison. 

She looked at Bessie with an awful and uncertain ex¬ 
pression. Bessie was saving her, Bessie loved her, she was 
giving to Marie, to Marie’s mother, freedom, security. 

Her body was wet with perspiration. She shut and 
opened her eyes. The skin of her head seemed to be creep¬ 
ing. She saw Bessie through flame. Bessie loomed im¬ 
mense and terrible and unknown before her. She tried to 
groan and heard only a faint shuddering “Ah” come through 
her open mouth; she pressed her nails through the dressing- 
gown into her flesh; she became engaged in a struggle with¬ 
out knowing what she struggled against, and it was a con¬ 
flict which tore her and lacerated her; she endured throes 
which were like the torments of birth; her face was a con¬ 
vulsion. 

Then she triumphed. She brought out a great cry of 


286 


SECRET DRAMA 


“Bessie,” and the sound of her voice was to her like a peal 
of divine harmony. The book fell to the floor, making a dull 
crash as it struck the floor. She went into the room with 
an ecstatic consciousness of her own movements. Tears 
were rolling down her face, and she tasted them as she 
spoke. “Bessie—Bessie—what are you doing?” 

Bessie had wheeled round at that first cry. She uttered 
a thin little scream, and stood with her arms up on either 
side of the huge arched round of her face as if she were 
about to beat off the intruder or call down some curse. Her 
face was as still as a lump of spongy vegetable, only her 
eyes burned unfathomable and living, full of determina¬ 
tion. 

“Bessie, Bessie,” Mrs. Jesson cried loudly, and grasping 
one of the old woman’s wrists tried to pull it down, but it 
was like an arm of stone; she could not move it. She 
looked at Bessie with horror, with love, with pity. She for¬ 
got what she had been about to do. She was suddenly sick 
with horror, conscious definitely of one thing alone—that 
she must hold Bessie; she gripped Bessie’s wrist as if she 
would break it. 

“No, don’t,” Bessie panted in her little animal voice. 
“Do let me go. You don’t understand. . . .” 

They looked wildly at each other as if they were hateful 
to each other, and they both made a violent gesture of self- 
defense when there was a loud creak beside them and with 
one movement Dido sat up in bed staring with dazed but 
frightened eyes at them. With another movement she was 
out of bed, half asleep, her ruddy face vacant but petrified, 
her body in an unstraightened, rigid posture. 


IMPACT 


287 


Mrs. Jesson uttered a moan. Her grasp of Bessie re¬ 
mained merciless and her big body was pulled about by Bes¬ 
sie’s struggles. She heard Bessie’s squeaky, unintelligible 
sentences, but with no part of her mind did she attend to 
them; she was not even conscious that she was being shaken, 
pushed off, pulled close; she saw only Dido; she was pierced 
to the heart by the awfulness of that tall white figure; 
she wanted to fly; she wanted to prostrate herself, her 
sense of guilt was so frightful that she thought she would 
die through the agony of it. She could not understand how 
she came to be standing there alive, upright, free, before 
Dido. 

“What is it?” Dido exclaimed in a sharp, imperative 
voice. She was now fully awake. She pressed her hands 
to the hair on her temples, drawing it away. She saw only 
the broad effects of the scene—not the expressions of the 
two women but their swaying bodies. She discerned no 
sense in Bessie’s cries; she received only an impression of 
supreme fear. 

“What’s the matter?” she said again, almost angrily. 
“Has anything happened?” 

Mrs. Jesson made no sound. She was frozen by the vis¬ 
ion of her own wickedness. She wondered over it; she was 
losing memory of the details which had led to her position 
here; she forgot the scene was not ended; she thought every¬ 
thing was ended; it seemed to her that there remained 
only a silent intense contemplation of her own evilness; 
she could imagine no more frightful expiation than this un¬ 
lapsing contemplation of her real nature under the amazed 
stare of Dido’s eyes. 


288 SECRET DRAMA 

So for an instant the scene remained obscure and station¬ 
ary. 

Then Bessie’s high, unheeded little cries ceased. She 
saw that they were unheeded. She stood still. 

The silence which fell had the effect of intensifying the 
darkness of the room. The light from the window by 
which they had seen each other seemed to grow less. They 
looked to each other’s eyes like pieces of statuary, dim 
and near and equal. But they could hear each other breath¬ 
ing and the room appeared full of life; it became for that 
reason terrifying. Dido felt that the room was brimmed 
with life, bursting with contents too immense. 

“Oh, what is it?” she cried almost moaningly. “What are 
you doing in here?” 

Why didn’t they speak, speak, move, act? 

And all this time Hilda slept. 

In a strange voice Mrs. Jesson said, “Miss Baird . . 
Then she made a convulsive movement with her fingers. 
She looked with anguish round the room. She shuddered 
so violently that the tremor of her body was almost percep¬ 
tible. 

“Don’t say anything,” Bessie cried. “Come away Let 
us go away.” 

She leaned her body against Mrs. Jesson’s, endeavor¬ 
ing to push her towards the door. “Don’t say anything. 
We’ll go away.” 

Mrs. Jesson didn’t move. Now at last there was a stir 
in Hilda’s bed. Hilda sat up with a start, her oval face 
and high brow hanging, in the shadow haunting and pallid 
like a moon. 


IMPACT 


289 

“Dido!” she called, with an accent of alarm. She wak¬ 
ened quickly. “What? What?” she cried, and got out 
of bed and came over to Dido’s bed, leaning her body across 
it to Dido, who stood on the other side. “What’s hap¬ 
pened? Is it fire? Tell me—quickly.” 

She spoke in a sharp staccato voice. 

“I don’t know what it is,” Dido said. “What is it, Mrs. 
Jesson?” 

“Don’t say anything,” Miss Hammond cried, pushing at 
Mrs. Jesson’s body with her own body. “Come away. 
Everything will be all right. We shall be safe. She won’t 
hurt you—you’ll be able to feel happy and safe. But come 
away. Do. Do.” 

“Bessie, be quiet,” Mrs. Jesson shouted. 

“Oh, oh,” Bessie whimpered in terror. 

Mrs. Jesson glared round the room, she made noises in 
her throat; unconsciously she grasped Bessie’s arm and 
jerked it backwards and forwards. “Miss Baird—I can’t 
say it—I-Wait.” 

She thrust her under lip over her upper. She fought 
with monstrous shapes, suffocated by their pressure, ravaged 
by it. Words burnt her brain. She felt herself sinking away 
from them, she felt deadness creeping over her mind, she 
began to settle into soundless contemplation of this event. 
With an effort which was like an uprooting, giving her a 
sense* of being torn, of enduring the anguish of mutilation, 
she dragged herself up, up, back to those flaming words. 
She shouted the first she saw. 

“I can’t believe it’s happened. In my house. I—I don’t 
know what I’m doing.” 



290 


SECRET DRAMA 


She looked with an appalled and amazed expression at 
Dido. “I ought to have thought. I ought to have seen. 
I shall never forgive myself. If you’d drunk it . . 

“Drunk it!” Dido echoed the words with a cadence of 
incredulity. 

“What say?” Hilda cried thinly at the same time. 

“Don’t, don’t,” Miss Hammond screamed. “Be quiet. 
Don’t tell her. Do come away. We shan’t be safe. We 
shall have to go away like I had to. Miss Wilson went. 
It’s all my fault. But I’ve made up for it. Be quiet and 
everything will be the same again.” 

“Oh, Bessie, you break my heart,” Mrs. Jesson cried. 
“If any one had told me you could do such a thing. . . .” 

In an hysterical, piercing voice Hilda burst out, “She’s 
put something in your drink, Dido!” 

Dido rolled her eyes towards the glass. 

“Yes,” Mrs. Jesson brought out with the effect of a deto¬ 
nation. “Don’t touch it. I’m mad—when I think. . . . 
Forgive us. Try and understand. . . . She don’t know 
how wicked she is. . . . Oh, Bessie, you don’t know what 
you’ve done to me,” she wailed, bending her anguished eyes 
on Bessie. 

Miss Hammond turned her head round on her humped- 
up shoulders; she looked at Dido, the gloom, the desola¬ 
tion, of her face perceptible even in the dimness. 

The instant of silence was broken by a feverish movement 
from Hilda; she groped on the table; there were tiny noises 
to which they all attended in trembling suspense, and then 
a minute peak of light leapt up, revealing her stony and 
intense face with white lids dropped giving her the blind 


IMPACT 


291 


white look of a statue. She pushed the match at the candle; 
they all started at the spluttering as if it were terrible; she 
held up the candle, her hand trembling so that it vibrated 
like a live thing, the yellow light flowing and fluctuating 
over all four faces which were seen fixed in expressions of 
terror as of people who found themselves living after the 
annihilation of all the goodness that had been deemed neces¬ 
sary to life, and encompassed by the corruption whose 
existence had seemed to make death desirable. 

Hilda looked at Mrs. Jesson, her eyes full of anger under 
the severe, steady arch of her brows. “I don’t know how you 
could let such a thing happen!” she exclaimed with a kind 
of chill, controlled energy. “You ought to look after her, 
knowing she’s liable to have fancies and do dreadful things. 
I suppose you saw her come in. But if you hadn’t! Dido 
would have drunk that lemonade. She always does. You 
know you always do, Dido,” she said with icy force, turn¬ 
ing her wide, outraged eyes on Dido in response to a low 
mutter, to an abrupt gesture. “You’d have drunk it, and 
you’d haveidied. I think it’s shameful that any one capable 
of doing such a thing should be allowed . . .” 

“Hilda,” Dido implored in an intense voice. She turned 
her pallor, her wonder, her distress, to Hilda. 

“Shameful,” Hilda repeated in a loud and unnatural 
tone. She looked at Mrs. Jesson, her eyes very open and 
dark, her closed lips trembling. 

Mrs. Jesson’s glance wandered. Who was this speaking? 
she asked herself. She drew a long sigh of despair. She 
felt meek, she felt abject and broken before the vehement 
strangeness of Hilda. She wondered dimly, what had she 


292 


SECRET DRAMA 


been doing never to see, to know, these people as they were? 

Dido removed her eyes from Hilda and directed them 
with fright at the glass. Immediately Hilda began to speak 
again, with the same energy, the same firm movements of 
her head and hands. 

“We must leave here at once,” she said. “I shan’t feel 
we’re safe until we’re out of this place. I think, if Dido 
had drunk that, I . . 

She made a gesture of implacable vengeance. 

“Hilda, Hilda,” Dido urged. 

“She’s right,” Mrs. Jesson said, her voice coming out deep 
and hoarse after Hilda’s high clearness. “Nothing you can 
say—could be too bad. I deserve it all.” 

She looked at Dido, her head thrown back, her little eyes 
burning in a convulsed, terribly aged face. “When I think 
—of your mother—I feel . . . What I feel God only knows. 
X thank Him—that you’ll never know. I wonder—He has 
not struck me down dead. ... In my house—under my 
protection.” 

She looked at the glass. 

“Don’t talk like that,” Dido cried. “Don’t feel yourself 
responsible. Hilda doesn’t know what she’s saying. Noth¬ 
ing’s happened. Don’t blame yourself like that. I can’t 
bear to hear you.” 

She extended her neck, bringing her white, excited face 
nearer to Mrs. Jesson. She felt as if they were all thud¬ 
ding against each other; the discord of their impacts, their 
blind, undirected impacts, was terrible to her. She felt that 
there existed some force which should illumine the darkness 
they stumbled in, so that they could meet each other in an 


IMPACT 293 

indestructible union. How close they all were, fighting and 
yet longing for union! 

There was another silence. On it there grew a hurried, 
light sound in the passage. Of the four only Miss Ham¬ 
mond ignored it. The other three started and turned ghastly 
faces to the door. Miss Hammond didn’t stir from her 
immobility, her despairing, sinister survey of Dido. 

In the doorway stood Miss Hyde. 

“Oh dear, then there is something the matter,” she ex¬ 
claimed. “I felt sure there was. I woke up and I heard 
voices. And I thought to myself ‘Something’s the matter. 
Some one’s ill,’ I thought. . . .” 

“Some one might have been dead,” Hilda said, her voice 
shaking, a spasm passing over her regular, smooth face. 
“Miss Hammond’s been trying to poison Dido.” 

She indicated the glass. 

“What?” Miss Hyde exclaimed. 

Taking long, hopping steps, swinging her arms, she came 
into the candlelight. She wore a white flannelette night¬ 
gown, and her gray hair was plaited and hung down her 
back. Her face looked extraordinarily alive and sensitive. 

Her appearance filled Dido with alarm. “Do let this end 
now,” she said with repressed passion. “It’s been averted. 
Don’t let us be so melodramatic. Oh, don’t say anything,” 
she almost screamed at Miss Hyde. “Let it end. Throw 
that stuff out of the window, Hilda.” 

An uncontrollable shiver passed over her as Hilda handed 
the candle to Miss Hyde and clasped the* glass. She stared 
fascinated at it. Death, death, she thought. Her eyes 
were dragged to Miss Hammond, 


294 SECRET DRAMA 

“Yes, come away, Bessie,” Mrs. Jesson said, pulling at 
Bessie’s arm. 

Softly Miss Hyde said: 

“Get into bed; you’re not to faint. Now be a good 
girl.” 

Bessie dragged herself out of Mrs. Jesson’s grasp. She 
walked, big and clumsy and subtly disquieting, over to 
Dido. 

Without any change in her hopeless, fixed stare, without 
a movement of her freckled, shapeless hands, she said: 
“Why did you come here to bring such trouble on us? Why 
couldn’t you leave us alone? You drove me away once, and 
now you drive Miss Wilson away, and you want to drive 
Mrs. Jesson away. What have we all done? I wish I could 
kill you, then you wouldn’t be able to make all this sorrow— 
all this dreadful sorrow.” 

She clenched her hands on her breast. Her eyes slid 
round with a heartrending, dull agony towards Hilda, whose 
arm was stretched over the window-sill into the soft purple 
bloom of the night. 

Dido made neither sound nor movement. She thought 
how her heart was beating; she thought would Miss Ham- 
mond bring down upon her throat those yellow, brown- 
spotted hands? And now it became impossible to look away 
from those hands; gazing at them loathingly, she thought 
with despair of Hob; she opened her dry lips to shriek to 
them all to move Miss Hammond; she experienced an in¬ 
tense terror as she suddenly understood how close Miss 
Hammond had been to her all the time, and she thought 
that life was frightful because of its concealments. 


IMPACT 


295 


Voices, movements, the return of Hilda, the perception 
of Mrs. Jesson’s tortured face, of Miss Hyde’s steady, shin¬ 
ing, watchful gaze and her silence, her amazing silence. 

Mrs. Jesson was grasping Bessie’s arm. “Come away, 
Bessie. Listen to me, Bessie; come with me.” 

“Yes, take her away,” Hilda’s high-pitched, hysterical 
voice sounded. “I can’t bear to look at her. Why should 
she feel those wicked things about Dido? If you knew 
she could take these dislikes to people—without reason— 
why didn’t you put her into a home? She oughtn’t to be 
free. . . .” 

“It’s quite true, you know,” Miss Hyde broke in, sol¬ 
emnly gazing at Mrs. Jesson. “It’s what I said to-day. You 
remember.” She turned to the cousins, “I said . . 

“Yes, yes,” Dido angrily silenced them both. “I remem¬ 
ber.” 

“Why do you stop them?” Mrs. Jesson said, with an 
effect of violence. “I deserve it all, Miss Baird. Don’t 
blame her; blame me. She don’t know; she thinks you’re 
the enemy who drove her away before. Eh, Bessie? But 
you’re wrong, dear.” She patted Bessie’s shoulders, not 
looking at Bessie, looking at Dido with her eyes screwed 
up as though she were blinded by Dido’s aspect. “She’s 
seen I was worried, and she got muddled. She don’t under¬ 
stand. Youumust go away, to-morrow.” 

She protruded her lips, gazing round the room as though, 
listening to some voice audible to herself alone, she searched 
for the speaker with dread, with a supreme repugnance. 

“Come, Bessie,” she said, making them start with her 
energy. She resolutely pulled Bessie towards the door. 


296 SECRET DRAMA 

Bessie didn’t resist, she walked as if she were tranced by 
her despair. 

“Don’t worry,” Dido said in a hurried and timorous voice. 
“We’ll go away to-morrow. Please—oh, for heaven’s sake 
don’t think you’re to blame; don’t look like that, Mrs. 
Jesson. Why need you? How could any one —any one — 
blame you?” 

Mrs. Jesson stopped. She vehemently pushed Bessie 
away from her without relaxing her hold of the old woman. 
She gazed at them, standing close together by the bed. 
She felt herself condemned to everlasting punishment; she 
felt cast out, worthless; she shrank before them, meekly, 
eagerly, exposing herself to their judgment. 

“I shall never forget this night,” she cried, her voice 
grating and uneven, “never. For the rest of my life I 
shall see you—a young girl—whom I have sinned against. 
. . . You don’t know. I value”—she raised her voice, sono¬ 
rously throwing it at them like a declaration before death— 
“I value your kindness—your thought—more—more ” 

She mumbled her lips, pinching Bessie’s shoulders, staring 
with a wild and distracted look straight before her into the 
shadows which massed deeply beyond the candlelight. 

The three others did not move nor speak. Somberly 
Miss Hammond watched her. Her glance descended to 
Miss Hammond. With one fierce abrupt movement she 
dragged Bessie into the doorway. Looking as if a stony 
immobility had fallen upon her body, upon her brain, 
upon her heart, she stepped into the passage with Bessie. 
Her stiff arm came out, the fingers crooked. The door 
slammed, hiding from the eyes of the others her tragical 



IMPACT 


297 

form and the quiet, stupefied, haunted person of her com¬ 
panion. 

For an instant they remained suspended in their atti¬ 
tudes of dismay and gloom. Then Miss Hyde said: 

“I’ll light the gas.” 

She stepped towards the bracket, looking hushed and 
cautious and grave. The nightgown foamed about over 
quite a large circle of carpet, outspread by her long, jerky 
movements. 

“Oh, Dido ” Hilda exclaimed weepingly. She threw her 
arms round Dido, her head bent back, her eyes dilated, her 
face bluish and damp. “How dreadful. That wicked old 
woman. To think—you’ve so nearly died.” 

She began passionately to kiss Dido all over her face. 

Dido did not speak; she merely linked her hands together 
behind Hilda’s back, thus ringing Hilda with her arms. 

Now the gas was alight, Miss Hyde blew out the candle. 
She looked at the two girls with a tender and timid expres¬ 
sion. 

“Now you get back into bed,” she said. “Go on; both 
of you; into bed. Upon my word,” she lifted her chin, 
gazing absently about her, “to think of anything like this 
happening! Well!” 

She had a pause of amazed contemplation. Resolutely 
she compressed her lips, gazing brightly and with a deep 
hopefulness at the cousins. 

“I wish we’d never stopped here,” Hilda was exclaiming, 
seeming almost to beat Dido with her nervous, emphatic 
voice. “You so good, and so thoughtful for every one, and 
to be treated like this! We’ll go home to-morrow; Miss 


SECRET DRAMA 


298 

Hyde can stop for the packing or—or I will—but you’re to 
go; you’re to go at once.” 

Dido smiled at her with half-closed, humid eyes. The 
chaos of thoughts in her head became suddenly clear, and 
all that was dark in them faded and a light seemed to 
descend gently over everything. 

She thought how Hilda loved her, and she experienced 
an exquisite happiness, a sense of well-being. She had 
never before known how much Hilda loved her. She moved 
her eyes to Miss Hyde, and without trouble, smoothly, 
she received like a flood the knowledge of Miss Hyde’s 
subdued, beautiful happiness. Miss Hyde was happy. 
Why? Because she found herself needed, relied on, in¬ 
dissolubly joined to them. How perfectly she responded 
to their call, repressing her desire to chatter, vigilantly 
watching them that she might give the essential reply, make 
no blunder, prove a rock and a light. Dear, dear little 
woman. 

Closely, closely, she stood with Hilda beside Dido. Dido 
was loved, fiercely guarded, made secure. And to-morrow 
there was Hob, and mother and father. 

Sorry that they had stopped! Oh, she was glad; with 
all her heart she was glad. She remembered her pleasure at 
Marie’s coming. She thought how the life of the house 
had broken over her. No; she wouldn’t have changed 
anything. Her excitement; Hilda’s kisses, Miss Hyde’s 
shining gaze, her profound pity and fondness for Mrs. 
Jesson—she wouldn’t have lost them, she wouldn’t have lost 
them. They were precious to her. 


IMPACT 


299 

She drew her flushed, agitated face from Hilda’s. She 
laughed. 

“Now then,” Miss Hyde brought out sharply, “don’t 
you get doing that. You stop that, there’s a good girl. 
We’ll laugh to-morrow—as much as you like—but you 
stop that now. Go on.” 

Dido made a convulsive sound and then stopped. She 
smiled at them both. She put out her hand to Miss Hyde. 

Hilda turned her head and looked at Miss Hyde. “We 
won’t leave her for a minute until she’s safely in the train, 
will we?” she said. 

Miss Hyde shook her head; there was a bright spot of 
color on either of her soft cheeks. She drew near and 
gripped Dido’s hand. She looked with ecstasy at Dido. 

They stood, their bodies touching, their faces solemn 
but calm. Then, simultaneously, they looked at the door. 

There wasn’t a sound in the house. 

Their heads drooped pensively. They gazed at each 
other with grave and regretful expressions. 


CHAPTER V 


ENLIGHTENMENT 

With hurried, irregular steps Mrs. Jesson went with Bessie 
to her own room. 

She thrust Bessie far into the room, and then returned 
and closed the door. 

“Stay there, Bessie,” she said, frowning expressively 
through the darkness. 

Miss Hammond remained where she had been released, 
a bulky figure without sign of life. 

Mrs. Jesson went with the same hurried and unsteady 
steps to the gas bracket. She lighted the gas. 

She looked round the room, turning her feverish, worn 
face from left to right. She felt stunned by the sameness 
of the room. She said to herself, “Nothing can have hap¬ 
pened,” and she had a moment of calm, of relief, and then 
her gaze came to that heavy, unstirring body, dumped 
down in the room, it seemed, like an image of profound, 
burning-eyed despair, and she saw awfully the passage, 
the doorway, the glass; she remembered her silence, she 
thundered to herself without the emission of a sound: “You 
wanted her to poison that girl; you were glad to see her 
do it. You thought how you’d go away quietly. . . .” 

“Oh, Bessie,” she shouted, “how could you do such a 
thing! You don’t know what you’ve done to me. When 
I think ...” 


300 


ENLIGHTENMENT 


301 


She jerked her hands out as if she were tearing some¬ 
thing. She stared at the walls, seeing them immovably 
confining her. She wanted to run away. 

No, she would never be able to outrace her knowledge. 
There was no region of peace, of oblivion, for her any¬ 
where. 

She advanced on Bessie as if she were about to destroy 
her. 

‘'Don’t look at me like that,” Bessie piped with an 
accent of desolation and dread. “I did it for you—to make 
up. It was all my fault—all the trouble—and the friends 
going. We shall all have to go now. I knew I should be 
found out. I told you my enemy was still looking for me 
and you said I was safe in the middle of you all; you said 
no one could get at me. But they could.” Her high voice 
rose higher; her eyes stood far out of her head, shimmering 
palely. “I told you it was better I should go away, but 
you wouldn’t listen. You didn’t know what I knew; you 
wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told you. She drove 
Miss Wilson away. I heard her making Miss Wilson cry 
-—I saw her come out of the room. She’d have come to 
you to-night perhaps. When I heard you come downstairs 
to-night I thought you were going to run away—leaving 
me. . . .” 

She rolled her eyes round in her livid, motionless face; 
then she fixed them on Mrs. Jesson with an accusing and 
remorseful stare. 

Mrs. Jesson listened, her own look intent and dark. Her 
mood changed. Now it seemed to her that Bessie had 
done nothing. She felt suddenly sorry for Bessie, and with 


302 


SECRET DRAMA 


the stirring of that feeling of sorrow it appeared to her 
that a thick darkness fell down between her and all other 
human beings, cutting her off from them for ever. For her 
alone there was no justification; she stood isolated in her 
wickedness. 

“There, Bessie, don’t get so excited,” she said slowly. 
“You’re not to blame; all through it has been my fault. 
I saw nothing—I thought of nothing—but Marie—and 
myself. All through. ... I never thought of you.” 

She gazed about her, experiencing again that peculiar 
feeling that something was being said to her. What was it 
that then rang clearly and dreadfully in her ears? 

Silence, and an unending, impenetrable darkness—she 
found only these. 

“I don’t blame you, Bessie. But you must understand 
—do you hear, dear? You must try and understand— 
you must—that you’re wrong. Miss Baird’s not your enemy. 
She’s never harmed you; she never would. Never, Bessie.” 

She passed her hand over her wet forehead and then 
looked in surprise at her glistening fingers. “Why didn’t 
you tell me what you felt, Bessie? Do you think, if you’d 
been in danger, I’d have let you stop here?” 

She looked at the wall facing her. She felt as if she 
were about to fall, and she blinked her eyes and shook 
her body. She threw off the torpor which was stealing 
over her mind and went on rapidly, thinking that she must 
say everything quickly before she sank again into that 
blackness, that deadness, that stiff, agonized contemplation 
of what she was. 

“You’re safe, Bessie. Nothing can harm you. Miss 


ENLIGHTENMENT 


303 

Baird will go away to-morrow. Now get into bed. I’ll 
sit by you. I shan’t go to bed. I feel-” 

She paused. Then she made an abandoning motion 
with her hands. “I can’t go to bed. But you’ll be ill, dear. 
Get in now, for my sake. Ah!” 

Clasping Bessie’s hands, she found that Bessie was still 
holding the laudanum bottle. She shuddered, staring at it 
with a ghastly look. She pulled open Bessie’s hand so that 
the bottle fell to the ground. 

“Get into bed, Bessie,” she said harshly. 

Without a word, with as few movements as possible, 
Bessie did so. She lay down with an appearance of instinc¬ 
tive prudence. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Do forgive me. I do 
love you so, and it made me feel so bad, seeing you fright¬ 
ened and . . .” 

“Oh, Bessie, I don’t forget that you did it because you 
loved me. I shall never forget that. I’ve said you’re not 
to blame. It was I—in my mother-love, in my jealousy—• 
my wicked jealousy—I’m guilty. I know. Don’t be afraid 
I don’t love you, Bessie. Try and forget it. Try and 
help me by keeping still and quiet and believing me— 
when I say your fancies were wrong.” 

“Yes, I will,” Bessie faintly breathed. 

She looked gently at Bessie. Then her gaze wandered, 
becoming perplexed and vague. 

She felt that some fresh thing tormented her, and she 
could have moaned with weak misery because she could 
not name it. She had an instant of black staring, and then 
she cried to herself,. “The light. The light.” She could 



304 


SECRET DRAMA 


not endure the light, which left nothing in shadow, which 
fell on her with a blinding and callous glare. 

She put out the gas. 

Through the darkness she groped her way back to the 
joed and sat down in a chair between it and the door. 
She leant back in the chair, her hands doubled on her 
knees, her wide-open eyes staring straight ahead. She 
could hear Bessie’s repressed, uneasy breathing. 

She saw the passage, the doorway, the glass. “I’d have 
let her do it. I wanted to go away without stopping her. 
I wanted Miss Baird to die.” 

It seemed to her that ages passed while she looked at 
these truths. She saw Dido’s face, and she remembered 
how she had hated that face; she recalled, shuddering, her 
fury against Dido. 

“O God, I’m a wicked woman,” she mumbled, and she 
thought, with a convulsive crooking of her fingers, that 
God was looking at her now. “How did I ever get into 
such a dreadful state?” she asked herself, shrinking down 
in the chair as she imagined that sad, grave, awful scrutiny. 

“It’s all through my love—all through my love for 
Marie.” 

Now it was as if a great, white, and implacable luster lay 
upon all her actions, upon her heart, and upon the actions, 
the hearts, of the others in the house. 

She had thought only of Marie and herself. She gazed 
at the thoughts, the emotions, the dreams, the fears, which 
had filled her during the past weeks, and she saw with 
what savage and ruthless fervor she had centered herself 


ENLIGHTENMENT 


305 


on Marie, thrusting the others away from her, hating them 
because they intervened, denying the right, the necessity, of 
any one to live, to enjoy, but Marie, Marie, Marie. 

She sat up violently, her heart crying the name with an 
endless and wild reiteration, crying it, not in love, but in 
terror as something which had ruined her, which had flung 
her out into vast disorder and solitude beyond the pity 
of humans or the mercy of God. 

“My love's made me wicked. I’ve remembered only 
that I was a mother and forgotten that I was a woman. 
A love—which could drive me to hate that girl—enough 
—to want her death—O Lord, I’ve loved wrongly. I’ve 
sunk—and I didn’t know I was falling. All through—wrong 
—terribly wrong.” 

This thought was so awful that she tried to refuse it; 
she summoned Marie’s face—she cried voicelessly, “She’s 
mine; why should I care about the others?” And then 
she saw the shadowy room and the two beds and her own 
soundless, eager figure. She shrank back, she cowered 
down before the livid shape of Dido’s mother; she saw all 
the faces turned to her, Dido, Hilda, Miss Hyde; she felt 
the stir, the murmur, of a great multitude beyond—all the 
lives, all the unknown, irrealizable lives. She was only one; 
she wasn’t pre-eminent, Marie wasn’t pre-eminent. Why 
should everything have been demanded for Marie? How 
dared she ignore the claims, the right, of those other exis¬ 
tences, asserting her need and Marie’s need clamorously, 
asking an empty world wherein Marie might move 
freely? 


SECRET DRAMA 


306 

She rested against the chair-back, breathing heavily, 
her mouth open, but her eyes closed. 

She longed for forgetfulness, but she could not forget; 
she could not cease thinking. She thought without pause, 
with a lacerating vividness. All things seemed so bright, 
so relentlessly clear, but it was an evil brightness, an awful 
clarity. 

Marie was right. Her love had been selfish. “Ought not 
a mother do all she can for her child?” she asked then, 
and she was crushed by the knowledge that motherhood 
was but one of many states of life and that each state 
must recognize the existence of the others, must acknowl¬ 
edge the equality of all, must express itself conformably 
with the rights, the exigencies, of those others. 

She had been mother only. When, or how deeply, had 
she thought of her state of responsibility towards Bessie? 
When had she remembered that any action or word or 
glance of hers might affect the lives of those around her, 
acknowledging her duty towards her fellow-creatures, sub¬ 
mitting herself to the restraints, the obligations, of her 
humanity? There came before her the faces of her sisters, 
and she admitted, with a deepening of her hate and con¬ 
tempt for herself, that her sisters had appeared to her 
only as supporters and sympathizers. “What they’d give 
me and do for me,” she said, “not what I’d do for them.” 

And then all the new pictures and recollections vanished. 
She saw the bedroom and Dido’s face, and Hilda’s. 

She experienced again the amazement, the bewilderment, 
which had risen in her when Hilda vehemently attacked her. 
She opened her eyes and stared into the blackness; she 


ENLIGHTENMENT 


307 


sucked her lips, trying to create a new sensation to escape 
from that sensation of deep pain which made her body 
seem to her to be one immense mystic wound. 

But she could not check her thoughts. She demanded 
with unconquerable irritation when had she ever considered 
Hilda as a personality? how could she know Hilda? She 
hadn’t seen her as a being with passions and desires and 
intentions of her own. She’d only seen her as something 
set there to receive plaints and thanksgivings and incerti¬ 
tudes, something afterwards to be forgotten; a piece among 
the furniture of earth set around herself and Marie. 

She straightened her shoulders, moving her hands help¬ 
lessly on her knees. “She loves Miss Baird,” she muttered, 
and at once, as if there had been something fresh and de¬ 
vastating in her words, she trembled and gazed round the 
room in supplication, with inward moans asking to be spared 
further enlightenment. 

But knowledge followed the movement, and she looked 
round at the bed and the just-perceptible round mass of 
Bessie’s head. 

“Oh, love,” she thought, convulsively shaking with de¬ 
spair over the word, almost with hatred of it; “Bessie loved 
me.” 

Love, love, her brain repeated, sending a shock through 
her with each repetition. She had said only mothers loved. 
Then, gazing at the darkness and the hollow of the window 
and the stars burning with light throbs, she brooded over 
Hilda’s love for Dido, over Bessie’s love for herself, over 
Dido’s strange unbearable look of love at herself. 

And she felt herself diminish. Vast, majestic, and su- 


SECRET DRAMA 


308 

preme shapes rose round her, and she looked up at them in 
fright and abject wretchedness; shapes of being swayed 
by loves that were not maternal, but which were strong 
despite that, effectual and enduring. 

She had thought no one loved like her, that no mother 
felt as she did, that she was magnificent and royal through 
her motherhood. 

“O Lord, I’m a wicked woman,” she muttered, and 
pressed her hands on her temples. “I loved her to the 
forgetfulness of all else. I’ve forgotten—all my other 
duties. I’ve hated—my fellow-creatures. I’ve thought I 
•—and she—were the only ones—that counted—in the 
world.” 

Words struggled up to her through storm and dark and 
confusion. 

“The dearest idol I have known. . . . Help me to tear it 
from my heart. . . .” 

“Oh, Marie” she groaned, and tears ran down her face; 
she gasped, torn by her efforts to repress her sobs; recol¬ 
lection of Bessie, of those others in the room near hers, 
stabbed through her, forcing her to impose on herself a 
restraint that was an agony. 

She covered her face with her hands. They must return 
to America, they must, they must. She couldn’t stay here. 

She thought of America as of a refuge where she could 
hide, effacing herself, amid contours which, in her excite¬ 
ment, she imagined as unaware of her dreadfulness, har¬ 
monious, and touched with light. 

She thought that upon the three hills, upon the odorous, 
rank spaces of the Weald, upon the lanes, and upon the 


ENLIGHTENMENT 


309 


woods, lay the shadow of her tyrannical and destructive 
love, the love which had brought her to the limits of mad¬ 
ness—a shadow ineffaceable and foul, which no eye might 
see but which her own heart would see, knowing the country 
marred for ever. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE MOTHER—THE WOMAN 

The still, earth-scented night gave place to a morning 
without wind, mild, and veiled in thin fogs which, irradi¬ 
ated by the sun, seemed to rise like a golden steam, hang¬ 
ing stirless, dim, under the fog-like pallor of the sky. 

Mrs. Jesson had, in the small hours, got into bed beside 
Bessie. She had slept towards morning. 

At eight o’clock she awoke. 

She looked quietly at the ceiling, at the walls, at the 
window. She became aware of Bessie sleeping beside her. 

“What?” her mind rapped out in surprise. “What’s 
this?” and she looked at Bessie wonderingly. 

Then she remembered. 

She closed her eyes and lay without motion, tasting the 
bitterness of knowledge, feeling the waves of her immense 
sadness roll upon her, pressing her down, concealing the 
light of day, the beauty, the peace. 

She suddenly became resolute and rebellious. “No, no, 
you mustn’t,” something shouted at her. “The dreadful 
thing’s been averted. Now you’ve got to atone. You 
mustn’t give way. You mustn’t think of yourself, but of 
others. You’ve got to be well—and sane—and calm because 
of the others. Remember Bessie—and those girls—and 
Marie. Get up. Get up.” 

With one movement of her body she sat up in bed. She 
looked down at Bessie. 


310 


THE MOTHER—THE WOMAN 


3ii 

“I mustn't show my sorrow,” she told herself, “or Bessie 
will get wild again.” 

She became momentarily confused and depressed by 
the thought of those other existences. She feared with 
an access of dread that she might fail them. What was 
asked of her? She felt that she could not say. She imag¬ 
ined that Bessie and Dido and Hilda were calling out to 
her to do something, and the thought that she couldn’t 
understand them distracted her. Her irritated, wan stare 
moved round. She mustn’t fail them. An immense pity for 
them stirred in her. 

“That poor girl—what she must be feeling now,” she 
said, and she became full of desire to go to Dido; she imag¬ 
ined herself holding Dido’s hands, looking tenderly and 
meekly in her face, soothing her. 

Then she perceived that she was not thinking of Marie, 
and she was amazed and perplexed. She thought that she 
must be doing wrong. Marie was her child. Ought she not 
to come first? 

She felt herself sinking into the heart of those rending 
terrors and doubts. Quickly but carefully she got out of 
bed. She mustn’t waken Bessie. 

She began to dress, staring at her clothes, thinking this 
shoe went on this foot, this button in here, this tape and 
this were to be tied. 

There was a soft stir on the stairs. Her fingers grew 
still; she fixed her eyes on the door; her heart began to pal¬ 
pitate violently; everything was cleared out of her brain; 
it seemed to wait, empty and dark, for some storm which 
would burst upon it, for some light which should fill it. 


312 


SECRET DRAMA 


The door opened gently and Marie’s rough head and 
broad, reddened face and sparkling eyes appeared. 

“Oh, you are up,” she exclaimed and came in. Holding 
the door she stood still, smiling at her mother with a look of 
thought and consideration. 

Mrs. Jesson smiled back and her smile was not forced. 
It came, involuntarily and sweet, on the deep, easing im¬ 
pression of Marie’s beauty, her health, and energy. The 
darkness seemed to thin; her heart-beats grew calmer. She 
gazed timidly and submissively at Marie, bathing herself 
in the light kindled simply by Marie’s presence. 

“What on earth’s Bessie doing in here?” Marie exclaimed. 
She spoke afterwards in a lower voice. “I was just mak¬ 
ing for the bathroom.” She bent her head, examined her 
finger-nails, and then looked again at her mother with kind, 
contented eyes. “Will you be sensible if I tell you some¬ 
thing?” she said. “You’ll have to know some time to-day. 
I hope it won’t blight you.” 

She glanced away, her flat mouth smiling very much, her 
glance full of triumph and seeming to diffuse a brilliant, 
powerful light over everything. She suddenly laughed, re¬ 
pressing her laughter through her remembrance of Bessie, 
but quivering in her dressing-gown with a seductive and 
vigorous effect. 

“Weep now, that we may have the* red eyes and nose as 
early as possible,” she said, merrily watching her mother. 
“You’re to be beautified later. Jimmy asked me to marry 
him that night on Hirst Hill, and I told him I’d think 
about it. I wrote to him yesterday to say I would, so he’ll 
be round to-day. Do be as sensible as you can over it.” 


THE MOTHER—THE WOMAN 


3i3 


She looked joyously, absently, round the room. “I don’t 
want to be treated like a lamb offered up for the sacrifice. 
He adores me, and-” 

She burst out laughing again. “I shall have my own way 
in everything.” 

She paused, lightly rocking the door, gazing at her 
mother without appearing to see her. 

“Marie,” Mrs. Jesson cried, with an indefinable intonation. 

“B-r-r!” Marie waved her off. “Orthodox congratula¬ 
tions, warnings, prophecies—the Whole Duty of Woman— 
terrible! Give them to Bessie. I’m bathing now. Later on 
I’ll tell you what to say to Jimmy. If you follow me now 
my curse shall be on you for ever.” 

Bending her head in laughter she went out, bringing her 
feet down firmly, shaking, with pride and confidence, her 
broad shoulders. 

Mrs. Jesson found herself gazing at the closed door. 

She made a movement towards it and then checked herself. 
She clenched her hands, her eyes darting from side to side. 

“Oh, oh,” she brought out hoarsely. 

She bit her lips without feeling the pressure of her teeth. 
“Jimmy,” she shouted to herself, and heard a mad whisper 
going on in her head, the endless, senseless, furious repeti¬ 
tion of the name. Again she jerked towards the door, and 
was checked, was struck, by its stupid, dull, unaltering stare. 

“She’ll have Jimmy,” she muttered, ceasing to see the 
door. “He’ll be her husband.” 

She uplifted her head, her expression strained, as she 
recalled Jimmy’s face. 

Now her despair became measureless. Her head remained 



314 


SECRET DRAMA 


stiffly upright, but she felt beaten down, crushed, beyond 
hope of reanimation. The last sorrow had fallen upon her. 

“All through my life—as a mother—I’ve looked forward 
to this day when—she should tell me . . .” 

She turned her head from side to side, wildly seeking 
for some confirmation of the truth of the denial which, 
full of rage, her mind thundered at her. It wasn’t true. It 
couldn’t be. The supreme moment of her life to come 
upon her— thus! 

All her dreams of this moment, her agitated and yet 
pleased dreams, her intentions, the things she had expected 
to say, the caresses she had felt she would give and receive, 
the profound thanksgiving she had thought would fill her, 
the sense of relief, the perception of a greater fear, a greater 
ecstasy to come than had ever yet been—she remembered 
them all. She set them against the reality of this moment. 

In her lividness she gave out a faint, vibrating “Ah!” 
She wondered over the reason for her existence. She thought 
that to make a woman a mother was to inflict upon her 
the supreme, the unpardonable wrong. 

“She’s going to have that man after all,” she said, driv¬ 
ing the words into her heart as if with each she dealt her¬ 
self a mortal wound. 

“On Hirst Hill,” she continued, trying to understand 
what these words meant. “And she wrote and told him 
yesterday.” 

Yesterday. She angrily rubbed her forehead with her 
knuckles, frowning at the floor with a feverish, exasperated 
expression. 

“She’d answered him when I—when-” 

She couldn’t go on. She stood frozen, blinded, by the 



THE MOTHER—THE WOMAN 


3i5 


knowledge that she might have thrust a life out of Marie’s 
way to find afterwards that the life was not an obstacle. 
She saw herself gazing at Dido’s long, still body, fixed 
there with it, and Marie boldly, lightly, receding away from 
her along another and unimpeded path. 

This scene was blotted instantly out of her mind. She 
looked instead curiously, intently, at Marie’s figure, at 
Jimmy’s. A light, faint but steady, beamed down to her. 
Marie would be married. May. She made an approving, 
joyous movement of her hands. No need to fear May. She 
cast a stealthy, bewildered look under her eyelids. Then 
—marriage; Marie would be safe then; she would be a wife. 

With shrinking, with incredulity, with an inexplicable 
and painful joy, she bent over Marie, seeing Marie in bed 
wearing a strange, bright, stern expression. She saw Marie 
with a child. Wifehood; motherhood; security. 

She raised her eyes, revealing them to be puzzled and 
naive. She couldn’t say whether she was happy or desolate. 

She plucked at the lace of her camisole. Unconsciously 
she turned and gazed out of the window. 

Looking at the gray fields, and the forms of some cows 
moving slowly in one through the smudged yellow air, she 
felt an inexorable and shattering message disengage itself 
from those flats, those pale rises, those mounded woods, 
and, penetrating like a cry, reach her and sink down into 
her heart. 

America. She would not be able to return to America. 
They would stop here. Marie would live here with her 
husband, and wherever Marie was she must be. 

For evermore she was fixed here. 

She looked hurriedly at the fields, the immovable hills. 


3 i6 SECRET DRAMA 

Her knees began to tremble; she drew a long, difficult 
breath. 

England, Jimmy, memory. 

She ceased to see the country; she forgot what had hap¬ 
pened, what was happening; she lost the sense of time and 
imagined that it was the day Elenry had died; she was 
quite certain death was near; but she was living; that was 
what was so terrible; everything dead and she living. 

Slowly she grew perceptive again. “Never mind,” she 
said to herself very gently and compassionately. “While I 
have her . . 

While she had Marie! She hadn’t her, she never would 
have her; never. She saw herself following Marie, a dogged, 
hopeless, unacknowledged figure traversing long tracks of 
time, passing through numberless states of emotion, incor¬ 
ruptible, not to be driven away, but always within sight 
only of Marie, never within touch; always having nothing, 
and knowing a deep and unlessening desire. 

Her face grew distorted; she saw merely the film of her 
tears. 

The bed creaked. Instantly she was alert. She thought 
with frantic haste of the others, all the others. Their 
names, their faces, whirled in her head. She squeezed her 
lids together so that her tears were flattened to her eye¬ 
lashes and did not fall to her cheeks. She thought with 
terror of Dido. Dido’s need to be considered, the protec¬ 
tion Dido asked of her, seemed to her immense and pre¬ 
eminent. 

She composed her face. She smiled. With that com¬ 
posed face, that smile, she turned and went to Bessie. 














3 
























